' 


RECON 


THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


f2    1 


THE  SALO^ 
AND  EI^GLISH  LETTERS 


CHAPTERS  ON  THE  INTERRELATIONS 

OF   LITERATURE   AND   SOCIETY 

IN  THE  AGE  OF  JOHNSON 


BY 


CHAUNCEY   BREWSTER   TINKER 

PROFESSOR   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 
IN    TALE    UNIVERSITY 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1915 

All  rights  rcnoxbd 


a\^ 


^ 


COPTRIOHT,    1915, 

By  the   MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  April,  1915. 


NortoooU  T^xtii 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


C.  E.  A. 

SAPIENTIS  PATRIS  FILIO 
SAPIENTIORI 


330380 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PART  I.  THE  FRENCH  BACKGROUND 
CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

Introduction 3 

CHAPTER  n 
Origin  and  Characteristics  of  the  Salon         ...      16 

CHAPTER  in 
The  Eighteenth  Century  Salon 30 

CHAPTER  IV 
English  Authors  in  Parisian  Salons 42 

PART   II.     THE  ENGLISH   SALON 

CHAPTER  V 
The  Earlier  English  Salon 83 

CHAPTER  VI 
Conversation  Parties  and  Literary  Assemblies      .        .    102 

CHAPTER  VII 

The  Bluestocking  Club 123 

vii 


viii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VIII 
The  London  Salon 134 

CHAPTER  IX 
Bluestockings  as  Authors 166 

CHAPTER  X 
Mrs.  Montagu  as  a  Patron  of  the  Arts   ....    189 

CHAPTER  XI 
Results 209 


PART  III.     THE   SOCIAL   SPIRIT  IN  ENGLISH 
LETTERS 

CHAPTER  Xn 
Johnson  and  the  Art  of  Conversation      ....    217 

CHAPTER  Xni 
Walpole  and  the  Art  of  Familiar  Correspondence       .    236 

CHAPTER  XIV 
Fanny  Burney  and  the  Art  of  the  Diarist     .        .        .    254 

CHAPTER  XV 

BOSWELL   AND   THE   ArT   OF   INTIMATE   BIOGRAPHY  .  .  .      268 

INDEX •     ....    285 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Conversazione Frontispiece 

PACmO   PAOB 

The  Levee 102 

Hannah  More 157 

Johnson  pointing  out  Mrs.  Montagu  as  a  Patron  of  the 

Arts 199 

Samuel  Johnson 217 

Boswell  the  Journalist  ....'..  268 

Boswell  Haunted  by  the  Ghost  of  Johnson  .         .         .  277 


PART  I 
THE  FRENCH  BACKGROUND 


CHAPTER   I 

Introduction 

It  is  one  of  the  venerable  commonplaces  of  criticism 
that  'manners,'  as  distinct  from  romance  and  the 
idealistic  interpretation  of  life,  make  the  bulk  of 
eighteenth  century  literature.  Comment  has  often 
begun  and  more  often  ended  with  this  platitude.  But 
that  large  body  of  work  vaguely  termed  'literature 
of  manners'  can  no  more  be  dismissed  with  a  truism 
than  can  the  life  that  it  depicts,  but  demands  a  critical 
method  as  varied  as  the  matter  which  is  treated.  In 
so  far  as  this  prevailing  interest  of  the  century  mani- 
fested itself  in  belles  lettres,  in  novel,  drama,  satire, 
and  descriptive  verse,  it  offers  no  unusual  problem 
to  the  Hterary  historian ;  but  side  by  side  with  such 
types  we  have  forms  no  less  characteristic  of  the  age, 
but  much  less  susceptible  of  adequate  criticism :  in- 
timate biography,  autobiography,  memoirs,  diaries,  r 
and  familiar  correspondence.  These  must  of  necessity 
be  rather  summarily  passed  over  by  the  literary  his- 
torian as  not  exclusively  belletristic  in  appeal.  And 
below  these,  in  turn,  there  are  certain  expressions  of 
the  social  spirit  so  anomalous  that  they  can  at  most 
detain  the  critic  but  a  moment,  and  must  often  be 

3 


4  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

dismissed  with  no  consideration  at  all.  Among  these, 
intangible  and  evanescent  by  nature,  yet  of  the  first 
importance  in  bringing  certain  kinds  of  literature  to 
birth,  are  conversation,  the  salon,  the  authors'  club, 
and  in  general  those  forms  of  social  activity  which 
exist  to  stimulate  the  production  or  diffuse  the  ap- 
preciation of  literature.  These,  which  are  in  them- 
selves no  more  literature  than  are  painting  and  politics, 
come  at  times  so  close  to  it  that  dividing  lines  are 
blurred.  A  mere  record  of  conversation,  such  as  gives 
the  pages  of  Boswell's  Johnson  or  Fanny  Burney's 
Diary  their  unique  value,  brings  us  to  a  borderland 
between  society  and  letters  where  a  distinction  be- 
tween them  is  merely  formal.  What  is  a  critic  to  do 
with  works  which  hardly  sue  for  recognition  as  litera- 
ture (though  the  world  has  so  acclaimed  them),  but 
avowedly  exist  to  record  the  delights  of  social  inter- 
course.'^ To  treat  them  as  'mere  literature,'  neglect- 
ing the  social  life  in  which  they  sprang  up  and  to  which 
they  are  a  tribute,  is,  to  say  the  least,  inadequate. 

It  is  with  this  borderland,  this  territory  where 
literature  and  society  meet  in  mutual  respect,  and 
presumably  to  their  mutual  advantage,  that  I  propose 
to  deal  in  this  volume.  I  shall  trace  as  well  as  I  can 
the  attempt  made  in  England  between  1760  and  1790 
to  emulate  the  literary  world  of  Paris  by  bringing  men 
of  letters  and  men  of  the  world  into  closer  relations, 
and  by  making  the  things  of  the  mind  an  avocation 
of  the  drawing-room  ;   and  thereafter  I  shall  endeavour 


INTRODUCTION  5 

to  show  the  results  of  this  movement  as  they  appear 
in  the  improved  artistry  of  three  or  four  types  of 
writing. 

So  long  as  letters  and  society  retained  this  intimate 
relation  and  men  and  manners  were  deemed  the  all-  ^x 
sufficient  study  of  poets,  it  was  natural  that  authors 
should  gather  in  the  metropolis.  The  city  was  to 
them  '  the  true  scene  for  a  man  of  letters ' ;  '  the 
fountain  of  intelligence  and  pleasure,'  the  place  for 
'splendid  society,'  and  the  place  where  'a  man  stored 
his  mind  better  than  anywhere  else.'  ^  When  the 
old  ideal  of  letters  was  displaced  by  a  wider  and  per- 
haps nobler,  the  supremacy  of  the  metropolis  as  a 
literary  centre  fell  with  it ;  but  in  the  Age  of  Johnson 
London  was  still  the  land  of  promise,  at  once  a  work- 
shop and  a  club,  a  discipline  and  an  opportunity. 
*A  great  city  is,  to  be  sure,'  said  Johnson,  'the 
school  for  studying  life.'     Johnson,  Goldsmith,  Burke,  U^ 

Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  Sheridan,  Beattie,  Chat- 
terton,  Crabbe,  Boswell,  and  many  another  went  up 
thither,  as  their  predecessors  for  generations  had  done, 
to  seek  their  literary  fortune  or  to  enjoy  their  new- 
established  fame. 

The  authors'  clubs,  hardly  less  popular  than  in  the 
days  of  Anne,  indicate  an  even  closer  centralization. 
A  theory  of  literature  squarely  based  on  reason  and  the 
tradition  of  the  classics  produced  a  solidarity  of  senti- 

1  Hume,  Boswell,  Burke,  and  Johnson  are  quoted  in  turn.  The  first 
reference  is  to  Edinburgh,  the  rest  to  London. 


6  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

ment  among  men  of  letters  which  was  of  great  use  in 
making  their  aims  inteUigible  to  society  at  large. 
Books  were  not  meant  to  be  caviare  to  the  general. 
Poets  did  not  strive  to  be  nebulous.  The  ever  growing 
democracy  of  readers  honoured  what  it  felt  that  it 
understood.  King,  Church,  women  of  societj^  women 
of  no  society,  painters,  actors,  and  universities  joined 
in  paying  respect  to  a  literature  that  had  not  yet  shat- 
tered into  the  confusion  of  individualism.  The  world 
of  letters  was,  in  a  word,  still  a  kingdom. 

As  in  Paris,  an  alliance  could,  accordingly,  be  effected. 
The  salon  was  the  natural  outgrowth  of  the  intelligent 
interest  of  the  reading  world ;  it  exhibited  the  same 
community  of  senjtiment  jn^readers  that  we  have 
noticed  in  writers,  and  writers  accordingly  honoured 
it.  In  London,  as  in  Paris,  it  became  possible  to  find 
the  men  of  light  and  leading  gathered  in  a  few  places 
of  favourite  resort,  in  drawing-room  or  club.  'I  will 
venture  to  say,'  remarked  Johnson  ^  to  a  group  of 
friends,  '  there  is  more  learning  and  science  witliin  the 
circumference  of  ten  miles  from  where  we  now  sit  than 
in  all  the  rest  of  the  Kingdom ; '  and  once,  when  the 
boasting  fit  was  on  him,  he  asserted  that  the  company 
sitting  with  him  round  the  table  was  superior  to  any 
that  could  be  got  together  even  in  Paris. 

It  was  no  mean  ideal  of  society  that  was  held  by 
groups  such  as  these.  Mere  repartee,  a  display  of 
rhetorical    agility,    was    not    its    principal    aim.     The 

1  Boswell's  Life,  Hill's  edition,  2.  75. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

desire  to  be  sound  mingled  with  the  desire  to  be  clever,  ^ 
and  produced  that  wisdom  which  the  eighteenth  cen-  j 
tury  loved  to  call  wit.  Wit  was  aphoristically  preten- 
tious  to  truth.  It  was  of  course  important  to  talk  in 
the  mondaine  manner,  but  the  mondaine  ideal  was  to 
talk  sense.  There  was  a  general  willingness  to  give 
and  to  receive  information  in  the  ordinary  social  rela- 
tions of  life.  Never  to  'diffuse  information,'  to  have 
'nothing  conclusive'  in  one's  talk,  was  to  fail.  John- 
son once  contended  that  Goldsmith  was  not  'a  social 
man' :  'he  never  exchanged  Tnind  with  you.'  ^  Burke's 
conversation,  on  the  other  hand,  delighted  him  because 
it  was  the  ebullition  of  a  full  mind.^  'The  man  who 
talks  to  unburthen  his  mind  is  the  man  to  delight  you,' 
said  he.^  Cheerful  familiarity  was  not  the  social  ideal : 
true  sociability  was  a  communion  of  minds.  Madame 
du  Deffand  summed  up  her  criticism  of  a  dinner  at 
Madame  Necker's  in  the  words,  'I  learned  nothing 
there.' ^ 

It  was  to  an  ideal  thus  frankly  educational  that  the 
salon  and  the  club  responded.  The  passion  for  such 
society  was  like  that  which  many  serious  souls  to-day 
feel  for  the  society  of  a  university.  To  breathe  the 
air  of  it  was  to  grow  in  the  grace  of  wisdom.  In  such 
an  idealization  of  the  social  life,  we  may  find  the 
explanation  of  many  so-called  'deficiencies'  of  the  age, 
its  indifference  to  Nature  (whatever  that  may  mean), 

1  Boswell's  Life  3.  253.  ^  /&.,  4.  167. 

^  Ih.,  3.  247.  *  Lettres  a  Wcdpole  3.  338 ;   28  May  1777. 


8  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

its  preference  for  city  life,  its  common  sense,  its  dread 
of  the  romantic  and  the  imaginary,  and  of  all  that 
seems  to  repudiate  the  intellectual  life  and  its  social 
expression. 

Such  was  the  delight  in  society  felt  by  Hannah  More 
and  Fanny  Burney  in  their  younger  days.  Such  was 
Boswell's  delight.  The  greatness  of  the  latter,  so 
ridiculously  aspersed,  reposes  entirely  upon  his  realiza- 
tion of  the  importance  of  the  social  instinct.  Boswell 
was  not  merely  a  social  'climber.'  He  was  a  man  who 
had  the  sense  to  see  a  short-cut  to  education.  To  call 
him  toad  and  tuft-hunter  may  be  an  ingenious  display 
of  one's  vituperative  gifts,  but  evinces  a  surprising 
ignorance  of  the  fact  that  a  man  may  educate  himself 
by  living  contact  with  great  minds. 

It  would  be  a  simple  explanation  of  all  this  respect 
for  the  salon  and  its  discussions  to  observe  that  England 
was  now  enjoying  an  age  of  free  speech.  It  is  even 
simpler  to  point  out  that  there  was  much  discussion 
because  there  Was  much  to  discuss.  There  were  prob- 
lems confronting  the  public  which  were  no  less  im- 
portant than  novel.  This  is  all  true,  but  somewhat 
lacking  in  subtlety.  The  peculiar  adaptability  of  these 
problems  to  conversation  was  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
were,  in  general,  still  problems  of  a  remote  and  ideal- 
istic kind.  They  did  not  yet  demand  instant  solution, 
for  better  or  for  worse.  Exception  must  of  course  be 
made  of  questions  purely  political,  but  the  rest  of  them 
—  the  theory  of  equality  and  the  republican  form  of 


INTRODUCTION  9 

government,  the  development  of  machinery,  the  educa- 
tion of  the  masses,  humanitarianism,  the  problem  of 
the  dormant,  self-satisfied,  aristocratic  Church,  roman- 
ticism, and  the  whole  swarm  of  theories  popularized 
by  Rousseau  —  had  been  stated  and  widely  discussed, 
but  they  had  not  yet  shaken  society  to  its  foundations. 
They  were  still  largely  theoretical.  Men's  thoughts 
were  engaged,  and  their  tongues  were  busy,  but  their 
hearts  were  not  yet  failing  them  for  fear. 

We  may  cite  as  a  significant  example  the  position 
of  the  lower  classes.  There  had  been  as  yet  no  serious 
disturbance  of  what  Bos  well  loved  to  call  'the  grand 
scheme  of  subordination.'  Now  Boswell  was  no  fool. 
He  was,  in  truth,  singularly  broad-minded ;  yet  in  such 
a  matter  as  this  his  notions  hardly  rose  above  a  benev- 
olent feudalism.  Despite  his  interest  in  Rousseau, 
despite  his  sympathy  with  Corsica  and  with  America,  he 
could  record  with  bland  approval  Johnson's  denuncia- 
tion ^  of  a  young  lady  who  had  married  with  '  her  inferior 
in  rank,'  and  the  Great  Moralist's  wish  that  such  derelic- 
tion 'should  be  punished,  so  as  to  deter  others  from 
the  same  perversion.'  Democracy  could  be  little  more 
than  a  theory  to  Johnson  when  he  asserted  ^  that  *if 
he  were  a  gentleman  of  landed  property  he  would  turn 
out  all  his  tenants  who  did  not  vote  for  the  candidate 
whom  he  supported,'  contending  that  'the  law  does 
not  mean  that  the  privilege  of  voting  should  be  inde- 
pendent of  old  family  interest.'     Again,  when  he  ex- 

1  Boswell's  Life  2.  328-29.  2  76.,  2.  340. 


10  THE  SALON  AND   ENGLISH  LETTERS 

plained  to  Mrs.  Macaulay  '  the  absurdity  of  the  level- 
ling doctrine '  by  requesting  her  footman  to  sit  down  and 
dine  with  them/  he  conceived  of  himself  as  smashing 
a  delusion  with  a  single  blow.  Such  'levelling'  notions 
being,  for  the  moment,  doctrinaire,  might  no  doubt  be 
put  down  by  a  sally  of  wit.  With  the  fall  of  the  Bas- 
tille they  took  on  a  different  aspect. 

Nor  was  the  case  widely  different  with  writers  less 
passionately  conservative  than  Johnson.  Horace  Wal- 
pole  had  a  dim  perception  that  the  trend  of  affairs  was 
destructive  of  the  old  order,  but  he  never  suspected 
that  the  theories  discussed  in  the  salons  were  to  have 
immediate  practical  results.  His  attitude  is  well  shown 
by  his  account  of  certain  Parisian  savants  who  talked 
scepticism  in  the  presence  of  their  lacqueys.  'The 
conversation,'  he  writes,  'was  much  more  unrestrained, 
even  on  the  Old  Testament,  than  I  would  suffer  at  my 
own  table  in  England,  if  a  single  footman  was  present.'  ^ 
Walpole  was  certainly  no  ardent  defender  of  the  ortho- 
dox faith,  but  sceptic  as  he  was,  he  was  not  ready  to 
meet  all  the  issues  involved  in  the  spread  of  the  doc- 
trine. Religion,  it  seems,  will  still  do  very  well  for 
menials. 

Even  Hume  and  Gibbon,  the  darlings  of  the  Parisian 
salon,  conceived  of  the  problems  they  themselves  had 
helped  to  raise  as  largely  speculative.  Gibbon,  for 
example,  plumes  himself  on  having  vanquished  the 
Abbe  Mably  in  a  discussion  of  the  republican  form  of 

1  Boswell's  Life  1.  447.  *  Letters  6.  301. 


INTRODUCTION  11 

government  ^  —  and  this  but  a  few  years  before  the 
foundation  of  the  two  great  republics  of  modern  times. 
The  irony  of  his  triumph  must,  presently,  have  been 
clear  to  him,  for  on  September  9,  1789,  he  wrote  to 
Sheffield :  '  What  a  scene  is  France !  While  the 
assembly  is  voting  abstract  propositions,  Paris  is  an 
independent  republic'  In  the  previous  August  he  had 
expressed  his  amazement  'at  the  French  Revolution.' 
We  may  perhaps  reserve  a  portion  of  our  amazement 
for  the  historian  who  had  failed  to  realize  that  the  the- 
ories with  which  he  had  been  long  familiar  in  the  salons 
would  one  day  cease  to  be  mere  matters  of  discussion. 
This  failure  of  English  authors  to  come  into  full 
sympathy  with  the  French  doctrines  of  the  hour  is  the 
more  remarkable  because  Frenchmen  had  long  regarded 
England  as  the  home  of  reason  and  of  liberty.^  Indeed 
France  had  turned  to  England  for  that  'freedom  of 
thought'  denied  to  herself;  but  having  adopted  it,  she 
had  pushed  it  to  extremes  of  which  her  teachers,  conserv- 
ative at  heart,  could  never  have  conceived.  D'Alem- 
bert,  than  whom  the  salons  contained  no  more  splendid 
figure,  acknowledged  in  his  Essay  on  Men  of  Letters 
that  it  was  the  works  of  English  authors  which  had 
communicated  to  Frenchmen  their  precious  liberty  of 
thought.^     So  common  is  the  praise  of  England  that 

^  In  his  Memoirs. 

^  See  Churton  Collins'  Voltaire,  Montesquieu,  and  Rousseau  in  England, 
London  1908. 

^  Essai  sur  la  SociStS  des  Gens  de  Lettres  et  des  Grands,  sur  la  Reputation, 
sur  les  Mecenes,  et  sur  les  R6compenses  Litteraires.  In  his  Melanges  de 
Litterature  et  de  Philosophie  (1753)  2.  119. 


12  THE  SALON  AND   ENGLISH  LETTERS 

he  now  feels  compelled  to  protest  against  the  further 
progress  of  Anglicism.^  But  in  vain.  The  decades 
passed  by  with  no  diminution  of  the  respect  for  Eng- 
land. In  1763  Gibbon^  still  found  English  opinions, 
fashions,  and  games  popular  in  Paris,  every  English- 
man treated  as  patriot  and  philosopher,  and  the  very 
name  of  England  'clarum  et  venerahile  gentibus.'  In 
the  next  year  Voltaire,  who  had  done  so  much  by  judi- 
cious praise  and  injudicious  blame  to  spread  the  know- 
ledge of  English  literature  and  philosophy,  addressed 
to  the  Gazette  Litteraire  a  letter  ^  containing  a  defence 
of  the  current  Anglomania.  In  this  he  laughed  at 
those  who  thought  it  a  'crime'  to  study,  observe,  and 
philosophize  as  do  the  English.  A  year  later,  Saurin's 
play,  r Anglomanie,^  had  appeared,  and  though  its 
success  on  the  stage  was  not  great,  Walpole  thought  it 

1  76.  2.  121.  Cf.  Helvetius  to  Hume  (Letters  to  Hume;  28  June  1767). 
'  L'attraction  de  la  terre  Britannique  agit  puissament  sur  moi.' 

*  See  his  Memoirs. 

3  (Euvres  (1819-25)  43.  320 ;  14^November  1764.  The  whole  passage  is 
worth  quoting:  'Mille  gens,  messieurs,  s'elevent  et  declament  contra 
I'anglomanie :  j'ignore  ce  qu'ils  entendent  par  ce  mot.  Sils  veulent  parler 
de  la  fureur  de  travestir  en  modes  ridicules  quelques  usages  utiles,  de  trans- 
former un  deshabille  commode  en  un  vetement  malpropre,  de  saisir,  jus- 
qu*  a  des  jeux  nationaux,  pour  y  mettre  des  grimaces  a  la  place  de  la  gravite, 
ils  pourraient  avoir  raison;  mais  si,  par  hasard,  ces  declamateurs  preten- 
daient  nous  faire  un  crime  du  desir  d'etudier,  d'observer,  de  philosopher, 
comme  les  Anglais,  Ils  auraient  certainement  bien  tort :  car,  en  supposant 
que  ce  desir  soit  deraisonable,  ou  meme  dangereux,  il  faudrait  avoir  beaucoup 
d'humeur  pour  nous  I'attribuer  et  ne  pas  convenir  que  nous  sommes  a  cet 
egard  a  I'abri  de  tout  reproche.' 

*  Its  first  published  title  was  L'OrphSline  Leguee.  See  also  Walpole's 
Letters  6.  360. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

worth  while  to  send  Lady  Hervey  a  copy  of  it  as  an 
example  of  a  reigning  fad.  The  leading  character, 
Eraste,  who  affects  a  preference  for  Hogarth  to  all 
other  painters,  who  quotes  Locke  and  Newton,  and 
drinks  tea  for  breakfast,  sums  up  his  views  in  these 
verses : 

Les  precepteurs  du  monde  a  Londres  ont  pris  naissance. 

C'est  d'eux  qu'il  faut  prendre  legon. 

Aussi  je  meurs  d'impatienee 

D'y  voyager.     De  par  Newton 
Je  le  verrai,  ce  pays  ou  Ton  pense. 

All  this  of  course  is  farcical ;  but  the  author,  a  member 
of  the  French  Academy,  had  a  serious  purpose.  He  was 
attacking  an  attitude  which  was  expressed  in  Voltaire's 
well-known  eulogy, 

Le  soleil  des  Anglais,  c'est  le  feu  du  genie. 
Saurin,  in  his  preface,  announces  his  esteem  for  England 
and  her  authors,  but  declares  that  the  popularity  of  the 
*cult'  is  due  to  the  jealous  dislike  by  Frenchmen  of 
their  own  authors  —  a  conclusion  not  quite  obvious. 
In  any  case,  the  academician  felt  that  he  had  a  duty  to 
the  nation.  In  1772  he  revised  his  comedy,  and  it  was 
again  performed. 

But  Anglomania  lived  on.  English  authors  were 
still  graciously  received  in  the  salons.  Madame  du 
Deffand  dared  to  assert  that  they  were  completely 
superior  to  the  French  in  all  matters  of  reasoning.^ 

^  Correspondance,  ed.  Lescure,  1.  497;   14  August  1768. 


14  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

The  English  language  was  increasingly  studied,  and 
English  novelists  and  philosophers  continued  popular. 
Madame  Necker  records  ^  an  anecdote  of  a  lady  who 
went  to  England  'pour  renouveler  ses  idees.'  The  lady 
was  perhaps  fulfilling  Montesquieu's  famous  advice, 
to  travel  in  Germany,  sojourn  in  Italy,  and  think  in 
England. 

Anglomania  was  thus  more  than  a  passing  fashion ; 
it  was  but  the  superficial  evidence  of  a  respect  for 
English  philosophy  of  life  which  Frenchmen  had  taken 
more  seriously  than  had  the  English  themselves.  It 
happened,  as  it  has  happened  more  than  once,  that 
English  literature  was  more  highly  esteemed  abroad 
than  at  home.  'Nous  avons  augmente,'  said  Madame 
Necker  to  Gibbon,^  'jusque  chez  vous  la  celebrite  de 
vos  propres  auteurs.'  English  novels  were  read  in 
France  for  the  new  ideals  of  life  which  they  were  sup- 
posed to  embody,  and  much  that  in  England  was  a 
mere  pastime  —  Clarissa,  for  example  —  became  in 
France  a  philosophy  of  conduct.  A  philospher  like 
Hume,  and  a  philosophical  historian  like  Gibbon,  found 
that  Paris  delighted  to  honour  the  prophets  whom  Eng- 
land was  too  careless  to  stone. 

The  pupil  had  thus  outrun  his  master,  and  had  indeed 
become  the  master.  In  the  earlier  decades  of  the 
century,  Voltaire  and  Montesquieu  had  gone  to  Eng- 
land to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  thought :  in  the  later  dec- 

1  Melanges  2.  240. 

2  Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works  2.  178. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

ades  Englishmen  visited  Paris  for  a  precisely  similar 
purpose.  From  the  middle  of  the  century  until  the 
outbreak  of  war  in  1778,  Englishmen  could  discover  in 
the  conversations  of  the  salons  what  a  nation,  always 
radical  at  heart,  had  made  of  the  theories  of  free  thought, 
liberty,  and  equality  before  the  law,  which  they  had, 
through  Voltaire  and  Montesquieu,  derived  long  since 
from  England.  English  authors  were  received  with  a 
cordiality  and  a  deference  which  had  never  been  shown 
them  in  their  own  country.  They  found  in  Paris  a 
social  system  conducted  in  honour  of  authors  and  of 
the  philosophies  which  they  were  disseminating.  It 
was  the  salon,  the  forcing-bed  of  the  new  ideas. 


CHAPTER  II 

Origin  and  Characteristics  of  the  Salon 

The  one  unfailing  characteristic  of  the  salon,  in  all 
yj  ages  and  in  all  countries,  is  the  dominant  position 
which  it  gives  to  woman.  It  is  woman  who  creates 
the  peculiar  atmosphere  and  the  peculiar  influence  of 
salons;  it  is  she,  with  her  instinct  for  society  and  for 
literature,  who  is  most  likely  to  succeed  in  the  attempt 
to  fuse  two  ideals  of  life  apparently  opposed,  the  social 
and  the  literary.  The  salon  is  not  a  mere  drawing- 
room  and  not  a  lonely  study,  but  mediates  between  the 
promiscuous  chatter  of  the  one  and  the  remote  silence 
of  the  other.  The  aims  of  the  salon  are  well  shown 
by  the  ridicule  of  those  enemies  who  accuse  the  hostess 
of  attempting  to  transform  a  school  of  pedants  and 
hacks  into  a  group  of  courtiers.  The  social  world 
is  likely  to  laugh  at  the  salon  because  it  suggests  the 
lecture-hall,  and  scholars  sneer  at  it  because  it  pretends 
to  the  distinction  of  a  literary  court. 

The  first  salons  were  indeed  courts  —  the  courts  of 
.     the    Italian    Renaissance.     We    find    in    the    Parisian 
/       salons  of  later  centuries  the  disjecta  membra  of   this 
earlier  Italian  society,  whose  true  relationship  is  under- 
stood only  when  we  trace  them  back  to  this  remote 

16 


ORIGIN  AND  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SALON    17 

original.  In  the  light  of  that  Italian  dawn,  all  leaps 
into  a  consistent  scheme.  Much  that  seems  odd  and 
unrelated  in  salon  life  is  brought  into  perspective : 
the  authoritative  position  of  the  scholar,  the  unique 
influence  of  woman,  and  the  tendency  to  set  up  'Pla-  v/^ 
tonic'  relations  between  the  sexes.  Humanism,  Pla- 
tonism,  and  gallantry  were  aspects  of  the  Renaissance 
and  of  the  Italian  Court,  and  in  their  lesser  manifesta- 
tions as  learning,  philosophism,  and  'Platonic  love,' 
they  remain  characteristic  of  salons.  Again,  the 
courts  of  the  fifteenth  century  brought  into  focus  many 
movements :  they  carried  on  the  mediaeval  system  of 
patronage ;  they  adopted  many  of  the  gallantries  of 
the  old  '  courts  of  love ' ;  and  they  brought  the  new 
humanism  into  vital  contact  with  society,  so  that  the 
expression  of  serious  thought  was  no  less  possible  in 
conversation  than  in  the  study  or  the  lecture-hall. 
Each  of  these  lives  on  in  the  salon. 

The  Renaissance  court  may  be  studied  in  any  one  of 
a  numerous  group.  We  may  find  the  ideal  set  forth 
in  the  group  of  artists  and  men  of  letters  who  surrounded 
the  youthful  Beatrice  d'Este,  patroness  of  Leonardo 
and  many  another ;  we  may  see  it  in  the  court  of  her 
sister,  Isabella,  Marchioness  of  Mantua ;  we  may  see 
it  in  the  coterie  of  Caterina  Cornaro,  once  Queen  of 
Cyprus,  and  in  her  later  days  mistress  of  a  little  court  ^ 

1  The  ideal  of  a  group  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  seek  in  literature  the 
pleasantest  of  entertainment  is  of  course  encountered  in  Italian  literature 
long  before  this  time.     The  singular  vitality  of  the  scheme  adopted  by 
c 


18  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

at  Asolo.  We  may  study  it  at  its  grandest  in  the  some- 
what earher  court  of  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  with  its 
conscious  imitation  of  the  Greek  symposium.  The 
court  which  held  Politian,  Pulci,  Ficino  the  Platonist, 
Alberti,  and,  later,  Michelangelo,  might  well  have 
boasted  itself  'the  little  academe'  of  Lovers  Labour^ s 
Lost.  But  perhaps  the  most  useful  example  is  the 
delightful  court  of  Urbino,  described  by  Castiglione 
in  his  Cortegiano. 

If  it  be  objected  that  Castiglione' s  description  of 
court  life  is  too  radiant  to  be  quite  true  to  fact,  if  it 
be  a  society  fairer  than  any  whose  existence  can  be 
demonstrated,  I  reply  that  it  is  so  much  the  better 
suited  to  our  purpose.  It  is  ideals  that  we  would  be 
at.  We  are  spared  the  attempt  to  reconstruct  them 
for  ourselves.     There  is  nothing  to  be  gained  by  re- 

/  minding  ourselves  that  courts  attracted  the  parasite, 
(    the  flatterer,  and  the  opportunist ;    it  is  the  finer  aims 

'^  of  the  men  of  genius  and  of  the  noble  women  who 
patronized  them  that  will  reward  our  attention.  Casti- 
glione knew  these  aims,  and  we  cannot  do  better  than 
quote  his  words  as  they  were  given  to  Elizabethan 
England  in  Hoby's  beautiful  translation.^  The  first 
quotation  refers  to  Frederick,  first  Duke  of  Urbino  : 

Boccaccio  for  the  framework  of  the  Decameron  is  proved  by  the  numerous 
imitations  of  it.  The  Petrarchists,  as  well  as  Boccaccio,  found  favour  in  the 
eyes  of  the  court-ladies. 

*  The  Book  of  the  Courtier,  from  the  Italian  of  Count  Baldassare  Castiglione, 
done  into  English  by  Sir  Thomas  Hoby.  Edited  by  Professor  Raleigh. 
London,  1900.     See  pp.  29  B. 


ORIGIN  AND  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SALON    19 

This  man  emong  his  other  deedes  praisworthy,  in  the 
hard  and  sharpe  situation  of  Urbin  buylt  a  Palaice, 
to  the  opinion  of  many  men,  the  fayrest  that  was  to  be 
founde  in  all  Italy,  and  so  fornished  it  with  everye 
necessary  implement  belonging  thereto,  that  it  ap- 
peared not  a  palaice,  but  a  Citye  in  fourme  of  a  palaice, 
and  that  not  onlye  with  ordinarie  matters,  as  Silver 
plate,  hanginges  for  chambers  of  verye  riche  cloth  of 
golde,  of  silke  and  other  like,  but  also  for  sightlynesse : 
and  to  decke  it  out  withall,  placed  there  a  wonderous 
number  of  auncyent  ymages  of  marble  and  mettall, 
verye  excellente  peinctinges  and  instrumentes  of 
musycke  of  all  sortes,  and  nothinge  would  he  have 
there  but  what  was  moste  rare  and  excellent.  To  this 
with  verye  great  charges  he  gathered  together  a  great 
number  of  most  excellent  and  rare  bookes,  in  Greke, 
Latin  and  Hebrue,  the  which  all  he  garnished  wyth 
golde  and  sylver,  esteaming  this  to  be  the  chieffest 
ornament  of  his  great  palaice.  .  .  . 

We  turn  now  to  the  court  of  his  son  Guidobaldo, 
who  carried  on  the  traditions  of  his  father : 

He  sett  hys  delyte  above  all  thynges  to  have  hys 
house  furnished  with  most  noble  and  valyaunte  Gentyl- 
men,  wyth  whom  he  lyved  very  famylyarly,  enjoying 
theyr  conversation  wherein  the  pleasure  whyche  he 
gave  unto  other  menne  was  no  lesse,  then  that  he  re- 
ceyved  of  other,  because  he  was  verye  wel  scene  in 
both  tunges,  and  together  with  a  lovynge  behavyour 
and  plesauntnesse  he  had  also  accompanied  the 
knowleage  of  infinite  thinges.  .  .  .  Because  the  Duke 
used  continuallye  by  reason  of  his  infirmytye,  soon 
after  supper  to  go  to  his  rest,  everye  man  ordinarelye, 
at  that  houre  drewe  where  the  Dutchesse  was,  the  Lady 
Elizabeth  Gonzaga.  Where  also  continuallye  was  the 
Lady  Emilia  Pia,  who  for  that  she  was  endowed  with 
so  livelye  a  wytt  and  judgement  as  you  knowe,  seemed 
the  maistresse  and  ringe  leader  of  all  the  companye, 


20  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

and  that  everye  manne  at  her  receyved  understandinge 
and  courage.^  There  was  then  to  be  hearde  pleasaunte 
communication  and  merye  conceytes,  and  in  every 
mannes  countenaunce  a  manne  myght  perceyve 
peyncted  a  lovynge  jocundenesse.  So  that  thys  house 
truelye  myght  well  be  called  the  verye  mansion  place  of 
Myrth  and  Joye.  And  I  beleave  it  was  never  so  tasted 
in  other  place,  what  maner  a  thynge  the  sweete  con- 
versation is  that  is  occasioned  of  an  amy  able  and 
lovynge  companye,  as  it  was  once  there.  .  .  .  But 
such  was  the  respect  which  we  bore  to  the  Dutchesse 
wyll,  that  the  selfe  same  liberty e  was  a  verye  great 
bridle.  Neither  was  there  anye  that  thought  it  not 
the  greatest  pleasure  he  could  have  in  the  worlde,  to 
please  her,  and  the  greatest  griefe  to  offende  her.  For 
this  respecte  were  there  most  honest  condicions  coupled 
with  wonderous  greate  libertye,  and  devises  of  pas- 
times and  laughinge  matters  tempred  in  her  sight.  .  .  . 
The  maner  of  all  the  Gentilmen  in  the  house  was 
immedyatelye  after  supper  to  assemble  together  where 
the  dutchesse  was.  Where  emonge  other  recreations, 
musicke,  and  dauncynge,  whiche  they  used  contynual- 
lye,  sometyme  they  propounded  feate  questions, 
otherwhyle  they  invented  certayne  wytty  sportes 
and  pastimes,  at  the  devyse  sometyme  of  one  some- 
tyme of  an  other,  in  the  whych  under  sundrye  covertes,^ 
often  tymes  the  standers  bye  opened  subtylly  theyr 
imaginations  unto  whom  they  thought  beste.  At 
other  tymes  there  arrose  other  disputations  of  divers 
matters,  or  els  jestinges  with  prompt  inventions. 
Manye  times  they  fell  into  purposes,^  as  we  now  a 
dayes  terme  them,  where  in  thys  kynde  of  talke  and 
debating  of  matters,  there  was  wonderous  great  pleas- 
ure on  all  sydes  :  because  (as  I  have  sayde)  the  house 
was  replenyshed  wyth  most  noble  wyttes. 

*  Spirit.  *  Figures,  allegories. 

^  'Arguments,'  discussions,  such  as  the  one  that  follows  on  the  nature  of 
the  true  courtier. 


ORIGIN  AND  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SALON   21 

Such  conversational  'pastimes'  were  enjoyed  almost 
every  night : 

And  the  order  thereof  was  such,  that  assoone  as 
they  were  assembled  where  the  Dutches  was,  every 
man  satt  him  downe  at  his  will,  or  as  it  fell  to  his  lot, 
in  a  circle  together,  and  in  sittinge  were  devyded  a 
man  and  a  woman,  as  longe  as  there  were  women,  for 
alwayes  (lightlye)  the  number  of  men  was  farr  the 
greater.  Then  were  they  governed  as  the  Dutchesse 
thought  best,  whiche  manye  times  gave  this  charge 
unto  the  L.  Emilia. 

//  Cortegiano  is  the  tribute  paid  to  this  group  and 
the  conversation  which  passed  in  it.  The  spirit  of 
the  book  is  not  to  be  shown  by  a  few  quotations,  but  a 
reading  of  it  will  reveal  the  following  facts :  that  men 
and  women  meet  on  a  plane  of  equality,  that  it  is  the 
presence  of  women  (though  fewer  in  number  than  the 
men),  that  gives  the  peculiar  tone  of  lightness  and 
gallantry ;  that  the  author  looks  to  the  court  not  only 
for  reward,  but  for  inspiration ;  that  the  conversation  y" 
at  its  noblest  (as  in  Bembo's  discourse  at  the  end) 
passes  over  into  poetry ;  that  the  conversation  is  of  a 
classical  and  philosophic  cast,  often  Platonic,  but  that  \/ 
this  high  seriousness  does  not  exclude  mirth  and  wit.^ 

^  The  following  anecdote  of  a  warrior  who  affirmed  that  the  entertainments 
of  the  Court  were  beneath  him,  may  be  cited  as  a  specimen :  '  The  Gentle- 
woman demaundyng  him,  What  is  then  your  profession  ?  He  aunswered 
with  a  frowning  looke :  To  fight.  Then  saide  the  Gentlewoman :  Seing 
you  are  not  nowe  at  the  warre  nor  in  place  to  fight,  I  woulde  thinke  it  beste 
for  you  to  bee  well  besmered  and  set  up  in  an  armorie  with  other  implementes 
of  warre  till  time  wer  that  you  should  be  occupied,  least  you  waxe  more 
rustier  than  you  are.'     p.  49. 


y 


22  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Now  these  aims  are  no  other  than  the  aims  of  the 
salon. 

This  ideal,  diffused  over  Europe,  had  a  long  and 
brilliant  history.  We  shall  encounter  it  again  in  the 
courtly  salons  of  Elizabethan  England,  and  even  in 
the  comedies  of  Shakespeare.  The  tradition  passed 
over  into  France  and  there  became  the  formative  influ- 
ence in  the  great  type  and  parent  of  the  Parisian 
salon,  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet. 

In  tracing  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  back  to  the 
earlier  Italian  court,  two  facts  stand  out  as  of  first 
importance.  In  the  first  place,  that  salon  was  estab- 
lished by  a  woman  who  was  herself  half  Italian,  had 
passed  many  years  in  Italy,  and  knew  the  traditions 
of  the  old  nobility.  In  the  second  place,  the  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet  originated  in  protest  against  the  crudi- 
ties of  the  Gascon  court  at  Paris,  and  represented  an 
attempt  to  realize  a  worthier  society. 

When,  in  the  second  decade  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, Catherine  de  Vivonne  opened  her  famous  house 
in  the  Rue  Saint  Thomas  du  Louvre  and  initiated  the 
reign  of  good  taste  in  France,  her  salon  displayed  almost 
immediately  certain  aspects  which  had  distinguished 
the  Italian  courts  and  which  were  to  become,  in  varying 
degrees,  permanent  features  of  the  Parisian  salon  and 
of  its  London  counterpart.  The  Marquise  de  Ram- 
bouillet became  the  type  and  exemplar  of  all  the  later 
hostesses.  Even  the  English  bluestockings  were  aware 
that  they  were  in  the  line  of  descent  from  her.     In  her 


ORIGIN  AND  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SALON    23 

poem  Bas  Bleu,^  Hannah  More  compares  the  EngHsh 
group  with  that  which  met  in  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet, 
and  Wraxall  ^  later  took  up  the  comparison  and  devel- 
oped the  parallel  between  the  drawing-rooms  of  Lon- 
don and  those  of  Paris.  The  Hotel  de  Rambouillet, 
therefore,  is  the  type  of  the  salon.  It  enables  us  to 
distinguish  what  is  permanent  and  common  to  all 
salons,  from  what  is  merely  transitory.  For  the  sake 
of  convenience,  I  shall  make  a  fivefold  grouping  of 
these  features.  It  will  of  course  be  understood  that 
this  analysis  does  not  afford  a  complete  characteriza- 
tion of  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet ;  for  that  society 
had  certain  important  aims  —  such  as  the  attempt  to 
purify  the  language  —  which  were  not  destined  to 
remain  permanent  marks  of  the  succeeding  salons,  and 
are  therefore  passed  over  in  silence.  Nor  must  it  be 
assumed  that  the  fivefold  analysis  describes  each  and 
every  later  salon.  A  given  salon  may  be  entirely 
lacking  in  one  of  the  features  —  though  never,  I  think, 
in  a  majority  of  them  —  without  losing  its  character ; 
and  in  proportion  as  a  given  salon  satisfies  these  five 
conditions,  we  may  say  that  it  approaches  the  ideal. 
(1)  In  the   first    place,   then,   the   house,   the   very 

^  See  below,  p.  124. 

*  Historical  Memoirs  1.  14.  Chesterfield,  who  knew  the  salons  at  first 
hand,  writes  to  his  son,  24  December  1750,  'Le  bon  gofit  commenga  seule- 
ment  a  se  faire  jour,  sous  le  regne,  je  ne  dis  pas  de  Louis  Treize,  mais  du 
Cardinal  de  Richelieu,  et  fut  encore  epure  sous  celui  de  Louis  Quatorze.  .  .  . 
Vers  la  fin  du  regne  du  Cardinal  de  Richelieu,  et  au  commencement  de 
celui  de  Louis  Quatorze,  I'Hotel  de  Rambouillet  etait  le  Temple  du  Goflt, 
mais  d'un  gollt  pas  encore  tout  a  fait  epure.'     Letters,  ed.  Bradshaw,  1.  382. 


y 


^ 


24  THE  SALON  AND    ENGLISH  LETTERS 

room,  in  which  the  company  gathers,  is  influential  in 
forming  its  spirit  and  establishing  its  reputation.  We 
have  just  examined  CastigHone's  description  of  the 
magnificence  of  Urbino :  something  of  that  royal 
splendour  is  demanded  of  the  salon.  It  was  Madame 
de  Rambouillet's  sense  for  architectural  arrangement 
and  decoration  that  contributed  to  her  social  success. 
Indeed  the  name  by  which  her  salon  is  known  plainly 
implies  it.  As  is  well  known,  she  began  by  breaking 
up  the  great  reception-hall  with  its  vast,  unsocial 
coldness  into  a  series  of  smaller  rooms  and  alcoves, 
thus  providing  for  the  intimacies  of  conversation  as 
distinct  from  the  hubbub  and  the  crowd.  Her  own 
favourite  room,  the  chambre  bleu  d^Arthenice,^  where  a 
privileged  few  —  at  most  eighteen  —  sat  by  her  couch, 
was  the  centre  and  soul  of  the  house.  It  was  the 
perfumed  temple  of  the  Graces,  where  the  year  was 
always  at  spring,  the  haunt  of  Flora,  and  the  throne 
of  Athena  herself.  This  room  reproduced  itself  in 
countless  'alcoves,'  'blue  rooms,'  and  ruelles  through- 
out the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  Madame 
de  Boufflers  was  famous  for  her  apartments  hung  with 
rose-coloured  damask,  and  Madame  Geoffrin  for  her 
house,  which  was  crammed  with  rare  china  and  bronzes, 
portraits  by  Boucher,  and  easel-pictures  by  Van  Loo. 
(2)  The  salon  must  retain  an  aristocratic  tone,  but 
without  submitting  to  the  unyielding  formality  of  the 

1  'Arthenice'  is  an  anagram  of  her  name,  Catherine.     It  is  said  to  have 
been  discovered  by  Malherbe. 


ORIGIN  AND  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SALON    25 

aristocracy.  It  sets  up  a  standard  of  recognition  based  / 
on  talent/  and  neither  courts  nor  rejects  the  nobihty. 
It  was  even  possible  for  the  bourgeois  to  obtain  ad- 
mission to  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  and  to  have  a 
career  there.  Vincent  Voiture,  known  as  'Chiquito,' 
the  son  of  a  wine-merchant,  became  the  leading  spirit 
in  all  the  amusements.  His  position  reminds  us  now 
of  the  mediaeval  jester,  now  of  Beau  Nash,  the  King 
of  Bath^~~~ 

In  the  eighteenth  century  the  salons  are  proud  to 
represent  a  democracy  of  genius.  Madame  Geoffrin 
was  the  daughter  of  a  nalet  de  chamhre  and  the  wife  of  a 
manufacturer ;  Madame  Necker  was  the  daughter  of 
a  Swiss  parson ;  and  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  a  foundling, 
who  had  been  'humble  companion'  to  Madame  du 
Deffand,  and  who  had  not  means  sufficient  to  enter- 
tain her  guests  at  dinner.  Wit,  intellect,  and  person- 
ality, rather  than  noble  birth,  became  the  key  to  social 
success. 

(3)  The  chief  staple  of  entertainment  offered  by 
the  salons  is  conversation,  literary  or  philosophical  in 
character.  Other  amusements,  such  as  Castiglione 
describes  at  Urbino,  are  not  necessarily  excluded,  and, 
in  France,  dancing,  excursions,  card-playing,  and 
gaming  were  popular  in  various  salons  and  at  various 
times.     But  conversation   always    reasserted  itself   in 

1  This,  too,  is  Italian.  Cf.  Burckhardt,  Renaissance  in  Italy,  tr.  Middle- 
more,  p.  359 :  '  Social  intercourse  in  its  highest  and  most  perfect  form  now 
ignored  all  distinctions  of  caste,  and  was  based  simply  on  the  existence  of  an 
educated  class.' 


/ 


V 


26  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

the  end.  Discussion  was  stimulated  by  the  reading 
of  original  poems,  essays,  sermons,  and  plays.  The 
criticism  of  these,  especially  of  the  plays,  was  of  no 
mean  importance  in  forming  the  spirit  of  French  liter- 
ature. In  particular  the  salon  gives  birth  to  certain 
minor  forms  of  literature,  epistles,  epigrams,  extem- 
pore verses  of  all  kinds, '  thoughts,'  maxims,  hons  mots, 
'  portraits,'  and  eloges ;  ^  but  of  more  importance  than 
these  is  its  unconscious  formative  influence  on  such 
arts  as  letter-writing,  biography,  and  all  manner  of 
anecdotal  writing. 

(4)  The  friendships  of  the  salon  are  of  peculiar 
depth  and  warmth,  developing  occasionally  into  pas- 
sion, but  always  Platonic  rather  than  domestic  in 
their  expression.  Thus  the  salon,  in  which  woman 
assumes  the  throne,  and  queens  it  over  a  coterie  (chiefly 
men)  is  perhaps  the  last  phase  of  the  Italian  court 
with  its  gallantries  and  lady-worship.  It  passed  on 
to  the  French  salon  that  note  of  sentiment  and  Pla- 
tonic love  which  is  found  in  II  Cortegiano,  and  which 
becomes  characteristic  of  Sappho  Scudery  and  the 
later  seventeenth  century.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
this  sentimental  friendship  united  with  the  more  prac- 
tical system  of  patronage,  and  resulted  in  a  type  of 
relationship  which  eludes  definition,  for,  on  the  one 
hand,  it  is  at  times  so  utilitarian  as  to  savour  of  phi- 

1  Thus  Mascarille  in  Les  Precieuses  Ridicules :  '  Vous  verrez  courir  de  ma 
fagon,  dans  les  belles  ruelles  de  Paris,  deux  cents  chansons,  autant  de  sonnets, 
quatre  cents  epigrammes,  et  plus  de  mille  madrigaux,  sans  compter  les 
enigmes  et  les  portraits.' 


ORIGIN  AND  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SALON    27 

lanthropy,  and,  on  the  other,  it  may  develop  into  a 
grande  passion,  and  compare  itself  to  Abelard  and 
Heloise.  Examples  of  it  are  the  various  relations 
existing  between  Madame  Geoffrin  and  Marmontel, 
Madame  du  Deffand  and  d'Alembert,  Madame  du 
Deffand  and  Horace  Walpole,  Madame  de  Boufflers 
and  David  Hume,  Mile,  de  Lespinasse  and  d'Alem- 
bert, Mile,  de  Lespinasse  and  Guibert,  Madame  Necker 
and  Edward  Gibbon. 

(5)  The  hostess  of  the  salon  is  invariably  the  subject 
of  ideal  descriptions,  'tributes'  which  recite  her 
charm  as  a  hostess,  her  merits  as  a  patron,  and  her 
general  superiority  to  the  Muses.  From  Castiglione's 
eulogy  of  Elizabeth  Gonzaga,  through  the  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet  (where  Malherbe  was  a  kind  of  poet 
laureate),  down  to  the  death  of  Mile,  de  Lespinasse, 
whose  genius  was  celebrated  by  d'Alembert  in  the 
Tombeau  de  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  this  is  an  almost 
unfailing  result  of  salon  life. 

Such  are,  then,  the  permanent  marks  by  which  we 
may  detect  that  interplay  of  the  social  and  the  literary 
life  in  what,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  we  call  the 
salon.  There  are  two  features  of  the  life  manifested 
only  at  certain  times  which  it  is  not  proper  to  include, 
though  they  are  more  generally  attributed  to  the  salons 
than  any  that  have  been  mentioned.  They  are  tran- 
sitory phases ;  but  they  must  be  briefly  considered,  if 
only  by  way  of  avoiding  false  assumptions. 

The  women  of  the  salons  are  usually  thought  of  as 


y 


28  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

femmes  savantes,  or  'learned  ladies,'  who  affect  a  learn- 
ing which  has  no  basis  in  fact.  Such  female  pedants 
were  common  figures  in  the  salons  of  a  certain  period. 
The  depiction  of  them  by  Moliere  is  no  more  exag- 
gerated than  the  purposes  of  comic  art  demand.  It 
must  be  further  admitted  that  such  women  may  appear 
now  and  again  in  the  salons  of  any  period ;  we  shall 
meet  with  a  few  in  the  pages  of  this  volume.  But  theyH 
are  not  common  in  the  best  salons  of  the  best  periods. 
Neither  in  the  beginning,  nor  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
were  the  hostesses  of  the  salon  what  we  ordinarily 
mean  by  the  phrase  femmes  savantes.  Of  Madame  de 
Rambouillet,  for  example,  M.  Vourciez  writes :  ^ 
'Ce  sont  les  aliments  les  plus  solides  qu'elle  digerait 
sans  pretention  a  devenir  une  "femme  savante,"  car 
Balzac  etit  pu  lui  adresser  a  elle  aussi  le  compliment 
qu'il  fit  a  Madame  des  Loges :  "Vous  savez  une 
infinite  de  choses  rares,  mais  vous  n'en  faites  pas  la 
savante,  et  ne  les  avez  pas  apprises  pour  tenir  ecole."* 
As  for  the  women  of  the  next  century,  they  assisted 
their  friends  chiefly  by  qualities  which  have  little  to  do 
with  book-learning,  by  superb  intelligence,  wit,  sympa- 
thy, and  good  taste.  They  made  no  pretence  to  erudi-  ; 
tion.  Indeed  they  rather  piqued  themselves  on  their 
ignorance  of  it.  To  mistake  Madame  Geoffrin,  who 
said  she  could  not  spell,  and  Madame  du  Deffand, 
who  was  bored  by  a  savanty  for  a  woman  like  Armande 

1  Petit  de  Julleville,  Histoire  de  la  Langue  et  de  la  Litterature  Franqaise 
4.  105. 


ORIGIN  AND  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SALON    29 

or  Belise  is  to  have  done  with  all  distinctions  at  once. 
It  is  to  confound  Prospero  with  Polonius. 

It  is  no  less  true  that  the  women  of  the  salons  were 
not  permanently  precieuses  ridicules.  Preciosity  had 
its  day ;  it  did  its  work  (which  was  by  no  means  con- 
temptible) ;  and  it  was  laughed  out  of  existence. 
There  were  no  precieuses  in  1750.  Indeed  the  caustic 
penetration  of  Madame  du  Deffand,^  the  homely  wit 
of  Madame  Geoffrin,  and  the  romantic  ardour  of  Mile, 
de  Lespinasse  are  at  equal  removes  from  the  conceits 
and  the  mincing  niceties  of  the  earlier  salons.  'II  n'y 
a  que  le  premier  pas  qui  coute,'  said  Madame  du 
Deffand  of  Saint  Denis  walking  with  his  severed  head 
in  his  hands ;  '  Je  suis  une  poule  qui  ai  couve  des  oeuf s 
de  canard,'  said  Madame  Geoffrin  of  herself  and  her 
daughter;  'Presque  personne  n'a  besoin  d'etre  aime,' 
said  Mile,  de  Lespinasse  to  her  faithless  lover.  Is  this 
the  language  of  preciosity  ? 

^  She  sneered  at  precieuses.     Lettres  a  Walpole  1.  417. 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Eighteenth  Century  Salon 

A  SALON  is  not  a  mere  literary  club.  It  is  something 
other  than  a  group  of  men  and  women  gathered  in  a 
drawing-room  to  discuss  literature  or  meet  a  poet. 
It  aims  to  exert  a  creative  influence  in  the  literary 
world.  It  does  not  concern  itself  with  literature  as  a 
finished  product  to  be  studied,  but  with  literature  as 
a  growing  thing  that  may  be  trained.  Hence  it  gets 
behind  the  product  to  the  producer,  and  seeks  to 
influence  the  characters  and  ideas  out  of  which  books 
are  formed.  It  is  an  informal  academy.  Its  aim  is 
private  in  that  it  is  directly  concerned  with  improving 
the  condition  of  authors,  and  public  in  that  it  attempts 
to  mould  public  opinion. 
/  Thus  it  is,  at  bottom,  a  system  of  patronage.  It 
7  offers  to  the  author  that  aid,  advertisement,  and  pro- 
tection which  he  had  once  sought  from  a  patron. 
Patronage  of  literature  was,  as  we  have  seen,  an  essen- 
tial feature  of  the  court  life  of  the  Renaissance.  It  had 
lived  on  through  the  seventeenth  century  at  courts 
and  in  noble  houses.  During  its  rapid  decline  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  many  of  its  duties  were  taken  over 
by  the  salons.     In  the  person  of  the  hostess,  the  salon 

30 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  SALON  31 

made_gifts  of  money,  granted  unofficial  pensions,  pmid 
printers'  bills,  and  even  gave  authors  a  home.  Walpole 
was  amused  at  the  number  of  authors  who  were  *  planted ' 
in  the  homes  of  French  ladies.  Madame  GeofiFrin 
in  Paris,  like  Mrs.  Montagu  in  London,  was  recognized 
as  a  patron  of  all  the  arts,  and  both  gave  of  their 
wealth  to  the  support  of  indigent  or  improvident 
authors. 

But  the  salon  bestowed  a  yet  more  valuable  favour 
in  its  recognitioiLQLliterary^jnerit.  Like  the  patron, 
it.  vouched  for  new  authors.  It  gave  its  support  to 
their  new  ideas.  And  in  this  subtler  form  of  patron- 
age, in  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  a  literary  jury  or 
academy,  it  anticipated  the  modern  press,  for  it  had 
similar  influence  and  fell  into  similar  errors.  Like 
the  modern  critical  review,  it  was  at  once  feared  and 
courted  by  authors  who  affected  at  times  to  despise  its 
pronouncements  but  never  ignored  them.  The  salon 
mediated  between  the  author  and  the  public.  It 
aimed,  like  a  true  critic,  to  correct  both  the  conceit 
of  the  author  and  the  indifference  of  the  world.  It 
responded  to  a  genuine  critical  demand  created  by  the 
disappearance  of  the  outworn  system  of  patronage 
and  by  the  rapid  growth  of  a  reading  democracy. 
The  salon  sprang  into  renewed  activity  during  a  period 
of  transition.  It  served  a  peculiar  need  during  chang- 
ing conditions,  and  passed  away  with  the  dawn  of  a 
new  century  which  had  its  own  system  of  criticism  by 
which  to  dispense  fame  and  to  create  opinion. 


y^ 


32  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

The  growing  spirit  of  independence  in  the  author 
had  already  caused  grave  dissatisfaction  with  the  old 
order  of  things,  as  the  increasing  tendency  to  enjoy  the 
society  of  his  fellows  in  clubs  and  taverns  had  prepared 
the  author  for  the  new  order  of  social  patronage. 
D'Alembert,  in  his  Essay  on  Men  of  Letters,  speaks  of 
the  old  system  in  terms  of  strong  disgust.  The  role  of 
courtier  is  the  most  despicable  that  can  be  acted  by  a 
man  of  letters.  Authors  and  peers  should  meet  on  a  J 
plane  of  equality.  'Les  seuls  grands  Seigneurs  dont  ' 
un  homme  de  lettres  doive  desirer  le  commerce,  sont 
ceux  qu'il  pent  traiter  et  regarder  en  toute  surete 
/  comme  ses  egaux  et  ses  amis.'  ^     Here  is  a  man  who 

will  not  lightly  expose  himself  to  feel  the  sting  of  charity, 
for  whom  a  new  system  not  wanting  in  grace  and 
true  appreciation  must  be  devised.  The  Essay  was 
translated  into  English  in  1764.  The  original  must 
have  been  written  about  the  time  when  Johnson  was 
penning  his  immortal  definition  of  'patron,  'a  wretch  , 
who  supports  with  insolence  and  is  paid  with  flattery.'  '* 

Was  it  possible  for  the  reading  world  to  render 
assistance  to  men  of  this  temper  .f*  Could  a  way  be 
found  to  make  grants  of  money  or  to  draw  attention  to 
worthy  writings  without  an  offensive  display  of  phi- 
lanthropy? Was  it  not  possible  to  assist  an  author, 
yet  cause  him  to  feel  that  any  favour  was  conferred 

*  Essai  sur  les  Gens  de  Lettres,  etc.,  op.  cit.  2.  136.  Cf .  Goldsmith,  Citizen 
of  the  World,  84  :  'A  writer  of  real  merit  now  may  .  .  .  talk  even  to  princes 
with  all  the  conscious  superiority  of  wisdom.' 


1 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  SALON  33 

by  himself  ?  The  salon  was  the  answer.  It  summoned 
authors  out  of  their  seclusion  and  segregation,  and 
confidently  bade  them  show  the  world  that  genius  yy^ 
might  express  itself  elsewhere  than  in  the  study  or  the 
coffee-house.  Let  them  try  an  appeal  to  a  'select 
public'  Let  them,  by  the  charm  of  their  conversation 
in  a  congenial  company,  break  down  the  barriers  of 
indifference  and  prejudice.  It  was  a  call  to  men  of 
letters  to  treat  with  the  world.  The  drawing-room  in 
which  they  were  received,  not  as  a  dependent  or  tool, 
but  as  chief  guests  doing  honour  to  the  company  by 
their  presence,  was  a  new  field  of  arbitration  between 
authors  and  the  world. 

In  the  successful  execution  of  any  plan  for  the 
social  recognition  of  letters,  woman  must  have  a  promi- 
nent place.  If  the  drawing-room  is  to  replace  the 
tavern  as  a  favourite  resort  of  authors,  the  presence  of 
^oman  is  as  truly  implied  in  the  one  as  her  absence  is 
from  the  other.  The  shift  from  the  coffee-house  to 
the  drawing-room  was  indeed  a  plain  tribute  to  woman, 
the  new  critic  and  the  new  patron.  As  she  was  already 
displaying  her  power  in  the  world  of  readers  by  bring- 
ing a  new  tone  of  refinement  into  literature,  she  was 
exerting  the  same  power  to  draw  the  men  of  letters 
into  her  salon.^  -^ 

* '  Colle  regrettera  toujours  les  cafes  litteraires  et  ne  se  consolera  pas  de  les 
voir  deserter  pour  les  salons.'  Petit  de  Julleville,  Histoire  de  la  LitUrature 
FranQaise,  6.  388.  It  was  a  significant  moment  in  the  history  of  the  Literary 
Club  in  London  when,  about  1780,  it  fell  into  the  habit  of  dining  at  Mrs. 
Vesey's  before  its  more  exclusive  sessions  at  the  tavern. 


1 


34  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

It  was  the  peculiar  fortune  of  France  to  produce 
women  to  discharge  this  social  and  literary  duty  whose 
personality  is  at  once  so  brilliant  and  so  influential 
that  it  rises  to  the  level  of  genius.  These  women  are 
not  merely  persons  gifted  with  an  instinct  for  social 
leadership;  they  are,  like  Cleopatra  and  Elizabeth, 
types  of  their  sex  and  a  revelation  of  its  power.  They 
are  the  very  symbols  of  the  century,  'the  abstract  and 
brief  chronicles  of  the  time.'  In  the  amazing  career 
of  Madame  de  Tencin  may  be  read  the  abandoned 
profligacy  with  which  the  seventeenth  century  closed, 
and  which,  in  sheer  disillusion,  turned  with  the  new 
century  to  decency  and  to  letters.  In  Madame  Geof- 
frin  we  see  the  surpassing  common  sense  of  the  period, 
its  force,  its  humour,  its  kindliness,  and  perhaps 
something  of  its  hardness.  As  the  best  of  the  bourgeois 
is  typified  in  Madame  Geoffrin,  the  aristocracy  of  the 
ancien  regime  is  expressed  in  Madame  du  Deffand. 
Its  merciless  clarity,  its  wit,  which  is  wisdom  in  mas- 
querade, its  hardness  of  heart  and  contempt  of  spiritual 
things,  and,  one  is  tempted  to  say,  even  its  blindness, 
are  they  not  found  in  her?  And  the  desolation  of 
her  last  years,  with  their  appealing  cry  for  love,  are 
they  not,  as  Lanson  has  said,^  the  hunger  of  the  heart 
which  turns  at  last  to  the  gift  of  love  and  the  sweetness 
of  tears  .f^     But  it  is  Mile,  de  Lespinasse  who  reveals 

^ '  Comme  son  si^cle,  Madame  du  Deffand,  dans  son  extreme  viellesse, 
retrouva  le  don  d'aimer  et  la  douceur  des  larmes.'  Lanson,  Choix  de  Lettres, 
quoted  by  Mrs.  Toynbee  in  Lettres  a  Walpole  1.  Ix. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  SALON  35 

romanticism  in  its  full  blow.  In  the  history  of  that 
movement  the  tornado  of  passions  which  convulsed 
her  spirit  and  at  length  destroyed  her  are  no  less  typical 
than  the  sorrows  of  Werther,  or  the  pageant  of  Byron's 
bleeding  heart.^ 

It  was  by  force  of  ^personality  and  by  their  attiUide 
tnwnrds  life,  that  these  women  succeeded  in  influencing 
literary  movements.  It  is  not  by  learning  or  authorship 
that  they  hold  a  place  in  the  history  of  French  litera- 
ture. Not  one  of  them  was  known  to  her  own  circle 
as  an  author  or  as  ambitious  to  become  one.  Madame 
de  Tencin  was,  to  be  sure,  a  novelist,  but  she  concealed 
the  fact  from  all  her  friends  save  Montesquieu  and 
Fontenelle,  allowed  her  works  to  be  attributed  to  others, 
and  kept  her  secret  as  long  as  she  lived.  Madame 
du  Deffand  and  Mile,  de  Lespinasse  have  attained 
fame  as  letter- writers,  but  through  no  conscious  effort 
on  their  part.  Their  dread  of  authorship  is  easily 
explained.  A  successful  hostess  must  avoid  giving  the 
impression  that  she  is  forming  a  coterie  in  order  to  have 
readers  for  her  books.  Madame  du  Bocage  found  her 
authorship  of  no  assistance  in  her  career  as  hostess : 
she  was  laughed  at  as  a  femme  savante,  and  her  guests 
were  said  to  be  invited  for  the  purpose  of  praising  her 
poems. 

As  personality  is  of  more  consequence  to  the  hostess 

^  'Elle  symbolise  revolution  qui,  a  I'epoque  oii  elle  vecut,  s'est  operee 
dans  I'Ame  de  ses  contemporains,  lorsque  de  raisonneur  le  siecle  s'est  fait 
passionne,  de  libertin  sentimental.'     Segur,  Julie  de  Lespinasse,  p.  15. 


36  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

than  authorship,  so  maturity  of  experience  is  of  more 
value  to  her  than  youth  and  beauty.  None  of  these 
women,  except  Madame  du  Bocage  ('forma  Venus, 
arte  Minerva')  pretended  to  the  fascinations  of  youth. 
Madame  de  Tencin  was  forty-six  when  her  salon  be- 
came famous ;  Madame  Geoffrin  was  fifty  when  she 
succeeded  Madame  de  Tencin  as  the  chief  hostess  in 
Paris,  and  she  was  sixty-seven  when,  as  'queen-mother,' 
she  made  her  triumphal  visit  to  the  King  of  Poland. 
Madame  du  Defland  was  sixty-eight  when,  in  the  eyes 
of  Walpole,  she  eclipsed  all  the  other  hostesses  in  Paris  ; 
when  she  was  eighty,  Edward  Gibbon  still  found  in  her 
salon, '  the  best  company  in  Paris.'  Julie  de  Lespinasse, 
the  youngest  of  them  all,  died  —  and  died  of  love  — 
at  forty -four.  It  is  not  surprising  that  Walpole  found 
in  Paris  the  'fountain  of  age.'  ^  'One  is  never  old  here,* 
he  writes,  'or  never  thought  so';  and  elsewhere,^ 
'The  first  step  towards  being  in  fashion  is  to  lose  an 
eye  or  a  tooth.  Young  people  I  conclude  there  are, 
but  where  they  exist  I  don't  guess :  not  that  I  com- 
plain ;  it  is  charming  to  totter  into  vogue.'  Ten 
years  later  he  finds  no  change :  ^  '  It  is  so  English  to 
grow  old !  The  French  are  Struldbrugs  improved. 
After  ninety  they  have  no  more  caducity  or  distempers, 
but  set  out  on  a  new  career.' 

Laurence  Sterne  goes  into  greater  detail.     Of  the 

1  Letters  6.  393. 

2  lb.  6.  367 ;   2  December  1765. 

3  lb.  9.  252;   [?  September]  1775. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  SALON  37 

second  period  in  the  life  of  a  French  woman  of  fashion, 
he  says :  ^  *  When  thirty-five  years  and  more  have 
unpeopled  her  dominions  of  the  slaves  of  love,  she 
repeoples  it  with  the  slaves  of  infidelity.'  Here  of 
course  is  a  glance  at  the  atheism  of  the  philosophes. 
In  morals,  politics,  and  philosophy,  the  Parisian  salon 
is  frankly  on  the  radical  side.  It  not  only  welcomes 
new  ideas,  but  goes  in  search  of  them.  Radicalism 
becomes  its  measure  of  success.  The  prevailing  hos- 
tility to  the  Church  and  the  contempt  for  anything 
savouring  of  dogma  caused  those  who  might  hold 
orthodox  or  conservative  views  to  conceal  them,  lest 
they  be  taken  as  evidence  of  a  cowardly  spirit  or  a 
feeble  mind.  Adherents  of  the  Church,  priests,  Jesuits, 
the  whole  tribe  of  devots,  and  at  last  even  the  deists, 
were  condemned  as  pharisees  and  time-servers.  Vol- 
taire himself  was  too  cautious,  'II  est  bigot,'  said  a 
woman  to  Walpole,^  'c'est  un  deiste.'  When  Hume 
was  admitted  to  Madame  Geoffrin's,  he  found  no 
deists  there,  for  all  had,  presumably,  passed  on  to 
atheism.  Madame  Geoffrin  herself  retained  an  odd 
sort  of  formal  relation  with  the  Church  which  amazed 
her  friends  who  whispered  about  it  as  though  it  were 
some  scandalous  liaison. 

Thus  the  salons  developed  a  looseness  of  morals  and 


'  Sentimental  Journey. 

2  Letters  6.  352 ;  19  November  1785.  Cf.  Madame  du  Deffand  to  Walpole 
{Letters  1.  385;  30  January  1768):  'Vous  n'aimez  pas  les  impietes,  vous 
etes,  ce  me  semble,  un  peu  devot.' 


W 


38  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

a  so-called  freedom  of  thought  which  their  exponents 
were  fain  to  regard  as  a  splendid  audacity.  Such 
ideals  are  still  dear  to  a  certain  class  of  writers  chiefly 
composed  of  minor  poets.  But  the  wits  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  promulgated  their  doctrines  without  the 
aid  of  that  slovenliness  which  is  indispensable  to  our 
free-thinking  Bohemians.  They  adopted  a  manner 
approved  of  the  world  in  order  that  they  might  win 
the  world.  They  avoided  anything  that  might  make 
themselves  or  their  speculations  ridiculous,  for  they 
wished  to  recommend  their  theories  to  men,  to  challenge 
their  intelligence,  and  to  capture  their  interest.  There 
is  an  odd  simile  used  by  Madame  Necker  ^  to  account 
for  Shakespeare's  fame  in  England,  which  is  of  no  use 
whatever  as  explaining  Shakespeare,  but  of  great 
significance  because  of  its  obvious  reference  to  the 
salons.  She  attributes  the  renown  of  the  poet  to  the 
acting  of  Garrick  who,  for  three  hours  daily,  captures  the 
hearts  as  well  as  the  ears  of  the  English  people,  and  so 
has  the  same  effect  that  is  produced  in  Paris  by  con- 
versation. The  aim  of  the  salon  is,  obviously,  to  create 
interest,  to  capture  hearts.  In  the  same  letter,  when 
urging  Gibbon  to  come  to  Paris  and  enjoy  the  fruits 
of  his  fame,  she  says,  'C'est  la  seulement  .  .  .  qu'on 
fait  passer  ses  sentiments  dans  I'ame  des  autres.'  There 
is  the  express  aim  of  the  salon :  —  to  bring  ideas 
^out  of  the  realm  of  the  abstract  down  to  the  business 

1  Letter  to   Gibbon,   30  September   1776 ;    in   Gibbon's   Miscellaneous 
Works  2.  178. 


^ 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  SALON  39 

and  bosoms  of  men.  In  such  a  process  it  is  the  function 
of  the  hostess  to  give  unity  and  soHdity  to  the  diver- 
gent views  of  her  coterie,  and  frequently  to  be  the  chan- 
nel by  which  they  reach  the  world.^  Thus  the  salon 
became  a  source  for  the  dissemination  of  ideas  and  of  a 
new  and  radical  philosophy. 

But  what  of  the  influence  of  the  salon  upon  the 
authors  who  composed  it  ?  That  it  produced  an  effect 
upon  them  the  least  sympathetic  was  obliged  to  ac- 
knowledge:  'At  worst,'  says  Walpole,^  'I  have  filled 
my  mind  with  a  new  set  of  ideas.'  There  men  cor- 
rected as  well  as  expanded  their  personal  views.  There 
they  might  'clarify  their  notions  by  filtrating  them  / 
through  other  minds.'  ^  The  salon  gave  an  opportu- 
nity for  the  development  of  ideas  in  a  new  medium  —  ^ 
the  liveliness  of  conversation.  At  such  time,  when 
the  formulation  of  opinion  is  stimulated  by  contact 
with  other  minds,  when  all  barriers  are  down,  all 
dread  of  critics  forgotten,  a  man  may  give  free  rein 
to  his  doctrines  and  borrow  all  the  brilliancy  that 
lives   in   exaggeration.^     The   pomposity   of   the  plat- 

1  This  function  is  admirably  expressed  by  Professor  Brunei  in  his  account 
of  Madame  de  Tencin  (Petit  de  Julleville,  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  Frangaise 
6.  403)  •  '  [EUe  les  ramenait]  sans  cesse  au  ton  leger  qui  convient,  meme  en 
un  sujet  grave  Tel  est  bien  le  role  d'une  femme  au  milieu  de  ces  tetes  pen- 
santes.  Elle  se  tient  audessus  et  au  dehors  du  debat,  qu'elle  envisage 
a,u  seul  point  de  vue  d'agrement,  et  dont  elle  regie  la  marche,  toujours 
souriante,  sans  le  laisser  languir  ni  s'aigrir.' 

2  Letters  6.  414 ;   3  February  1766. 
'  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson  3.  47. 

*  Madame  Necker  speaks  of  the  '  art  perf ectionne  de  rezag^ratioD,'  in  the 
letter  to  Gibbon  cited  above. 


V 


40  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

form  and  the  solemn  pedantry  of  the  study  disappear, 
and  a  man  talks  for  the  joy  of  talking.  He  makes  up 
in  vivacity  what  he  loses  in  dignity.  When  an  author 
deserted  the  salons,  as  did  Rousseau,  it  frequently 
indicated  a  state  of  self-absorption  which  was  not 
always  advantageous;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  when 
an  author  made  his  submission  to  them,  the  result 
was  frequently  evident  in  a  note  of  urbanity  and  in  a 
piquancy  of  illustration  which  he  could  hardly  have  \n 
attained  elsewhere.^  Thus  the  function  of  the  salon 
was  to  preserve  the  sanity  and  clarity  of  literature,  to 
keep  authors  abreast  of  the  times  and  in  touch  with 
one  another  and  with  the  world.  But  in  this  alliance 
of  authors  with  the  world,  in  this  exchange  of  solitude 
for  society,  of  the  study  for  the  drawing-room,  there 
were  dangers  which  threatened  the  very  life  of  litera- 
ture; for  it  was  an  attempt  to  serve  two  masters.  / 
Far  from  removing  the  petty  faults  of  a  literary  life,  it 
brought  with  it  a  host  of  new  ones  —  flattery,  the  over- 
estimation  of  the  works  of  a  clique,  the  attempt  to 
direct  public  opinion  by  force,  and  above  all,  the 
cultivation  of  the  graces  at  the  expense  of  the  imagina- 
tion. There  was  actually  a  tendency  towards  the 
dangers  of  democracy  —  the  surrender  to  majority, 
the  descent  to  a  common  level  —  but  without  a  saving 
reliance    upon    the    elemental    instincts    of    mankind,  j 

1  Thus  Marmontel:  'Leurs  entretiens  6taient  une  ^cole  pour  moi  non 
moins  utile  qu'agreable  et,  autant  qu'il  m'etait  possible,  je  profitais  de  leurs 
legons.' 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  SALON  41 

The  whole  prophetic  side  of  literature,  the  vision  of  the 
poet,  the  glory  and  the  folly  of  the  ideal,  priest  and 
lyrist,  Wordsworth  and  Shelley,  de  Vigny  and  de 
Musset  —  these  are  all  beyond  the  ken  of  salons.  But 
they  had  their  office.  It  was  their  function  to  teach 
the  observation  of  life,  to  lend  clearness  and  vivacity 
to  style,  and  so  to  add  a  charm  to  learning,  to  win  the 
ignorant  and  to  elevate  the  frivolous  by  showing  that 
dulness  could  be  overcome  with  wit  and  pedantry 
with  grace. 


CHAPTER  IV 

English  Authors  in  Parisian  Salons 

The  English  visitor  was  a  familiar  figure  in  the 
Parisian  salon.  In  an  age  when  travellers  were  study- 
ing manners  rather  than  mountains,  and  preferred 
the  society  of  philosophers  to  the  finest  galleries  in 
Europe,  no  visit  to  Paris  was  complete  without  a  con- 
versation with  good  Madame  Geoffrin  or  an  hour 
with  the  'blind  sibyl,'  du  Deffand  of  the  bitter  tongue. 
A  stream  of  Englishmen  from  Prior  to  Gibbon  poured 
through  their  drawing-rooms  ^  and  listened  with  in- 
terest or  with  alarm  to  the  philosophes  who  were,  to 
use  Walpole's  words,^  busily  pulling  down  God  and 
the  King.  Sometimes  a  returning  traveller  proved 
his  acquaintance  with  this  society  by  sacrificing  his 
veracity.  Thus  Goldsmith  asserted  ^  that  he  was 
present  'in  a  select  company  of  wits  of  both  sexes  at 

'  English  visitors  in  Paris  are  satirized  in  two  comedies  by  Samuel  Foote, 
The  Englishman  in  Paris  (1753)  and  The  Englishman  returned  from  Paris 
(1757).  In  the  former  the  leading  character.  Buck,  is  offered  an  introduction 
to  'Madame  de  Rambouillet ' ;  in  the  latter  he  comes  home  completely 
Frenchified. 

2  Letters  6.  332;  19  October  1765. 

'  Memoirs  of  M.  de  Voltaire.  During  Goldsmith's  sojourn  on  the  Con- 
tinent, Diderot  and  Fontenelle  were  still  visitors  at  Madame  Geoffrin's. 

42 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        43 

Paris'  when  Diderot,  Fontenelle,  and  Voltaire  dis- 
puted about  the  merits  of  English  taste  and  learning. 
The  interview,  it  has  been  repeatedly  shown,  could 
hardly  have  taken  place,  inasmuch  as  during  the  months 
when  Goldsmith  must  have  been  in  Paris,  Voltaire  was 
never  once  there.  But  the  very  lie  is  eloquent,  for  it 
shows  the  kind  of  experience  in  Paris  which  English 
authors  sought  and  prized. 

The  cosmopolitan  tone  was  contributed  to  the 
salon  by  the  eighteenth  century.  It  begins  with 
Madame  de  Tencin.  This  brilliant  woman,  somewhat 
promiscuous  in  all  her  tastes,  expanded  the  influence 
of  her  drawing-room,  and  thereby  that  of  later  salons, 
by  welcoming  distinguished  men  without  respect  of 
nationality ;  nor  were  foreigners  slow  to  improve  the 
opportunity   of  meeting   a   woman   who   was   no   less  v/ 

renowned  for  her  social  prestige  than  for  the  pictur- 
esque iniquity  of  her  past.  Her  salon  was  in  truth  the 
atonement  which  she  offered  the  world  for  the  sins 
of  her  youth. 

She  had  begun  her  career  by  running  away  from 
the  convent  where  she  had  taken  the  veil.  She  used 
her  secularized  charms  to  win  lovers,  and  used  her  lovers 
to  advance  her  brother  in  the  Church.  She  became 
mistress  of  the  Regent,  who  snubbed  her  because  she 
wished  to  talk  business  when  his  mind  ran  on  love. 
The  royal  harlot  then  sank  into  a  cheap  adventuress ; 
she  gave  birth  to  a  son,  destined  to  become  famous  as 
d'Alembert,  and  'exposed'  him  on  the  steps  of  Saint 


44  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Jean  le  Rond  in  the  hope  of  making  an  end  of  him. 
At  length  when  a  maddened  lover  shot  himself  to 
death  under  her  own  roof,  she  was  imprisoned  in 
the  Bastille,  where  she  languished  for  some  months. 
And  then,  after  her  release,  as  if  to  show  that  she  had 
a  head  if  not  a  heart,  she  abandoned  her  career  of 
profligacy  as  lightly  as  she  had  formerly  abandoned  a 
lover  or  a  child,  and  opened  a  drawing-room  which, 
with  the  death  of  Madame  de  Lambert  in  1733,  became 
the  most  brilliant  and  influential  in  Paris.  Here  for 
twenty  years  she  reigned  over  such  retainers  as  Mon- 
tesquieu and  Fontenelle.  Her  success  is  easier  to 
understand  than  her  motives.  Certain  it  is,  however, 
as  Professor  Brunei  has  suggested,^  that  she  attracted 
the  men  of  letters  because  she  gave  them  to  understand 
that  their  respect  was  the  one  thing  in  the  world  for 
which  she  cared. 

Madame  de  Tencin  had  become  intimate  with 
Englishmen  even  before  the  days  of  her  fame.  She 
was  that  'eloped  nun  who  has  supplanted  the  nut- 
brown  maid '  ^  in  the  affections  of  Matthew  Prior, 
during  his  diplomatic  service  in  Paris  in  the  winter 

1  In  Petit  de  Julleville's  Histoire  de  la  Littirature  Frangaise,  op.  cit.,  6. 
404,  VYalpole,  who  must  have  had  her  character  from  Madame  du  Deffand, 
tells  Mason  that  she  was  'a  most  horrid  woman'  who  'had  great  parts  and 
so  little  principle  that  she  was  supposed  to  have  murdered  and  robbed  one 
of  her  lovers,  a  scrape  out  of  which  Lord  Harrington  and  another  of  them 
saved  her.  She  had  levees  from  eight  in  the  morning  till  night,  from  the 
lowest  tools  to  the  highest.'     Letters  10.  28 ;   13  March  1777. 

*  Works  of  Bolingbroke  7.  169;    letter  to  Hanmer,  December  1712  (?). 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        45 

of  1712-13.  She  used  him  to  bring  the  needs  of  her 
brother  (whom  Prior  did  not  consider  to  be  'worth 
hanging'  ^)  before  Lord  Bolingbroke.  He  himself 
was  presently  avowing  her  his  Queen,  and  himself  her 
faithful  and  devoted  subject  *dans  tous  ses  etats.''  ^ 
Leslie  Stephen  ^  considers  that  Bolingbroke  made  use 
of  Madame  de  Tencin  in  his  intrigues  with  the  Regent ; 
but  however  this  may  be,  his  intrigues  with  the  Re- 
gent's mistress  became  common  gossip,  and  were  pub- 
lished   abroad   by    the   ballad-singer   in   the   streets.^ 

But  Bolingbroke  was  not  the  only  English  peer  who 
paid  court  to  the  'nonne  defroquee.'  Lord  Chester- 
field was  introduced  to  her  by  Montesquieu,  and,  in 
1741,  passed  some  time  in  her  salon,  during  its  later 
glory.  Here  he  enjoyed  the  society  of  authors  whom 
he  was  always  pleased  to  regard  as  superior  to  those 
of  his  own  country  and  whose  works,  particularly 
Montesquieu's  Esprit  des  Lois,  Fontenelle's  PluralitS 
des  Mondes,  and  the  productions  of  Crebillon  and  Mari- 
vaux,  he  never  tired  of  recommending  to  his  son. 
Fontenelle,  the  placid  death's-head  who  had  never 
laughed  and  who  could  lead  a  minuet  at  the  age  of 
ninety-seven,  must  have  seemed  to  Chesterfield  the 

1  lb.,  7.  87 ;   17  October  1712.     Prior  to  Bolingbroke. 

^  Lettres  Historiques  de  Bolingbroke  (Paris  1808),  2.  431 ;    3  June  1715. 

'  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  'Saint  John.' 

*  See  the  ribald  verses  commencing,  'Tencin,  vous  avez  de  I'esprit,' 
printed  in  Lettres  de  Bolingbroke,  op.  cit.,  2.  433  n.  The  second  stanza  begins, 
'  BoUngbroke,  es-tu  possede  ? ' 


46  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

pattern  of  a  man.  And  yet  he  could  assert,  a  few  years 
later,  that  Fontenelle  had  sacrificed  somewhat  too 
much  to  the  Graces.^ 

But  what  did  he  think  of  Madame?  What  did  the 
great  exemplar  of  the  bel  air,  himself  a  patron  of  letters, 
think  of  the  life  and  aims  of  the  salon  ?  It  is  not  easy 
to  say.  He  flattered  Madame  de  Tencin  outrageously, 
according  to  his  professed  theories  ;  he  praised  the  good 
taste  of  Frenchmen  (of  which  Madame  was  at  once  'le 
soutien  et  I'ornement'),  and  denounced  the  brusque- 
ness  of  his  countrymen  according  to  his  wont.  He 
boasted  himself  ^  the  '  ami,  f avori,  et  enfant  de  la 
maison'  of  Madame  de  Tencin.  But  when  he  had 
occasion  to  describe  the  literary  life  of  Paris  to  his 
son,  he  declared  that  the  salons  were  filled  with  gossips 
who  talked  nonsense  and  philosophes  whose  works 
were  metaphysical  fustian,  verba  et  voces  et  praeterea 
nihil}  It  was  an  institution  which  young  Stanhope 
must  visit,  where  he  was  to  talk  epigrams,  false  senti- 
ments, and  philosophical  nonsense,  but  to  which  he 
was  to  maintain  a  large  superiority.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
this  show  of  indifference,  I  cannot  but  feel  that  Ches- 
terfield liked  the  salon.  What  else  in  heaven  or  earth  was 
there  for  such  a  man  to  like?  What  could  have  been 
more  to  his  taste  than  its  courtly  union  of  intrigue  and 

1  Letters,  edited  by  Bradshaw,  1.  383;   24  December  1750. 
^  See  his  letter  to  Madame  de  Tencin,  introducing  Mrs.  Cleland,  in 
Letters,  as  above,  2.  771 ;   20  August  1742. 
^Letters,  op.  cit.,  1.  383. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        47 

elegance,  of  literature  and  wit,  of  free  thought  and  easy 
morals?  The  salon  certainly  liked  Chesterfield.  'Let 
him  come  back  to  us,'  cried  Montesquieu  and  the  rest 
of  them  when  Madame  de  Tencin  had  read  his  letter 
to  the  circle,  and  read  it  more  than  once.  'He  writes 
French  better  than  we  do,'  exclaimed  Fontenelle, 
'qu'il  se  contente.  s'il  lui  plait,  d'etre  le  premier  homme 
de  sa  nation,  d'avoir  les  lumieres  et  la  profondeur  de 
genie  qui  la  caracterisent ;  et  qu'il  ne  vienne  point 
encore  s'emparer  de  nos  graces  et  de  nos  gentillesses.'  ^ 
When  Madame  de  Tencin  despatched  this  mass  of 
flattery  to  Chesterfield,  Fontenelle  added  a  note  beg- 
ging the  English  lord  not  to  draw  down  upon  himself 
too  much  French  jealousy.^  Unless  Chesterfield  was, 
like  Fontenelle,  incapable  of  all  human  emotions,  he 
was  pleased  by  that.  The  Frenchmen  had  studied 
him  well.  They  touched  his  vulnerable  point,  and 
posterity  will  not  easily  be  persuaded  that  it  was  in 
vain. 

'In  future,  then,'  said  Fontenelle,  after  the  death 
of  Madame  de  Tencin,  'I  shall  go  to  Madame  Geof- 
frin's.'  The  change  must  have  supplied  the  aged  wit 
with  many  observations  on  the  diversity  of  the  female 

1  See  Professor  P.  M.  Masson's  excellent  monograph,  Madame  de  Tencin 
(Paris  1909),  pp.  278-80.  The  appendix  contains  Madame  de  Tencin's 
letters. 

*  Cf.  Montesquieu,  Lettres;  12  March  1750  (in  (Euvres,  Paris  1879)  : 
'Dltes  a  milord  Chesterfield  que  rien  ne  me  flatte  tant  que  son  approbation,' 
and  the  rest. 


^ 


48  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

character;  for  though  'la  Geoffrin'  had  studied  the 
methods  of  her  predecessor,  there  was  no  resemblance 
in  character  between  the  two.  There  is  no  suggestion 
of  Madame  de  Tencin's  subtlety  in  the  amiable  bour- 
geoise  who  became  a  queen  of  society  at  fifty,  but 
rather  a  rich  simplicity  of  nature  that  is  very  winning. 
Her  faults  as  well  as  her  virtues  are  quite  obvious. 
Her  humour  is  for  ever  expressing  itself  in  homely 
maxims  ^  which  suggest  the  lore  of  peasants.  She 
made  her  way  by  the  simplest  means,  a  warm  heart, 
abiding  common  sense,  and  a  persistent  will.  Her 
keen  intelligence,  the  gift  of  nature,  not  of  books, 
enabled  her  to  understand  the  philosophers  at  least  as 
well  as  they  understood  themsdves,  to  advise  —  almost 
lead  —  them,  to  be  their  'Mother,'  and  to  push  them 
into  the  Academy.  It  is,  at  first  blush,  amazing  that 
a  woman  without  education,  who,  indeed,  found 
grammar  a  mystery,  could  thus  have  become  the  em- 
press of  the  wits.  But  living  as  she  did  in  an  'age  of 
reason'  when  the  imagination  was  turning  back  to 
contemplate  man  in  a  'state  of  nature,'  unspoiled  by 
r\V\  V  the  arts  of  a  luxurious  civilization,  such  a  defect  was 
>y^       *    not  fatal.     Shrewd,  placid  yet  alert,  simple  and  with 

*  Madame  Necker,  who  had  studied  Madame  Geoffrin's  methods,  re- 
marks {Nouveaux  Melanges  1.  100):  'Le  piquant  de  Tesprit  de  Madame 
Geoffrin  consistait  toujours  a  rendre  des  idees  ingenieuses  par  des  images 
triviales,  et  pour  ainsi  dire,  de  menage;  son  esprit  etait  toujours  ente  sur 
un  ton  bourgeois.'     The  following  may  serve  as  specimens  (of.  above,  p.  29) : 

'Madame  a  frappe  a  la  porte  de  toutes  les  vertus  sans  entrer  chez 

aucune.'     'Quand  nos  amis  sont  borgnes,  il  faut  les  regarder  de  profil.' 


/ 
■X 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        49 

the  sweep  of  vision  that  is  given  only  to  the  simple, 
she  looked  out  fearlessly  upon  the  society  of  her  time, 
with  all  its  elaborate  systems  and  new  philosophies 
—  and  understood.  As  she  was  without  fear,  so  she 
was  without  contempt.  She  saw  what  was  good  in 
the  new  order  and  encouraged  it,  but  without  becom- 
ing its  slave.  Like  Johnson  (whom  she  would  have 
understood),  she  contrived  to  'worship  in  the  age  of 
Voltaire,'  but  this  was  with  no  surrender  of  her  interest 
in  Voltaire.  She  was  intolerant  of  pretence.  She 
adopted  a  manner  of  treating  her  friends  which,  in  its 
combination  of  brusqueness  and  affection,  is  thoroughly 
parental.  She  scolds  and  pushes,  punishes  and  re- 
wards. She  decides  disputes  with  a  word.  She  spends 
with  open  hand.  Her  great  desire  is  to  be  of  help  to 
her  children.  D'Alembert  writes^  of  her,  '"Vous 
croyez,"  disait  elle  a  un  des  hommes  qu'elle  aimait  le 
plus,  "que  c'est  pour  moi  que  je  vols  des  grands  et  des 
ministres  ?  Detrompez-vous ;  je  les  vois  pour  vous 
et  pour  vos  semblables,  qui  pouvez  en  avoir  besoin : 
si  tous  ceux  que  j'aime  etaient  heureux  et  sages,  ma 
porte  serait  tous  les  jours  fermee  a  neuf  heures,  ex- 
cepte  pour  eux.'"  But  she  never  forgot  that,  in  her 
own  house,  she  alone  was  mistress.  Her  charity,  which 
she  conducted  on  a  heroic  scale,  implied  a  certain 
obedience  in  the  recipients  of  it ;  but  both  charity  and  ,/ 
obedience  were  only  devices  for  promoting  their  inter- 
ests.    'Elle  ne  respirait  que  pour  faire  le  bien,'  said 

'  Letter  in  Eloges  de  Madame  Geoff rin,  ed.  M.  Morellet,  p.  110. 

E 


50  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

d'Alembert.^  He  and  the  other  writers  for  the  Cyclo- 
paedia profited  by  her  charity,  for  without  her  patron- 
age that  great  work  could  hardly  have  been  carried 
to  publication. 

In  the  salon  of  Madame  Geoffrin  and  her  free-think- 
ing friends,  David  Hume  found,  in  1763,  a  natural 
abiding-place.  It  had,  indeed,  a  dual  attraction  for 
him  in  the  person  of  its  hostess  and  the  character  of 
her  coterie.  Madame  Geoffrin  must  have  found  the 
Scotch  philosopher  a  man  after  her  own  heart.  She 
understood  the  broad-featured,  simple  man,  whom  she 
presently  took  to  calling  ^  her  'coquin,'  her  'gros 
drole.'  Like  her,  he  enjoyed  the  society  of  rationalists. 
He  writes  naively  in  his  Autobiography :  '  Those  who 
have  not  seen  the  strange  effects  of  modes,  will  never 
imagine  the  strange  reception  I  met  with  at  Paris, 
from  men  and  women  of  all  ranks  and  stations.  The 
more  I  resiled  from  their  excessive  civilities,  the 
more  I  was  loaded  with  them.  There  is,  however,  a 
real  satisfaction  in  living  at  Paris  from  the  great  num- 
ber of  sensible,  knowing,  and  polite  company  with 
which  the  city  abounds  above  all  places  in  the  universe. 
I  thought  once  of  settling  there  for  life.'  But  he  kept 
his  head  under  the  pelting  flattery.  He  neither  de- 
spised his  social  success  nor  exalted  it  as  the  summum 
honum.  Like  Madame  Geoffrin,  he  made  no  apolo- 
gies for  himself,  and  pretended  to  no  social  graces 
which  he  could  not  easily  acquire.     His  French  was 

1  Eloges,  op.  cit..  p.  105.  *  Letters  to  Hume,  pp.  288-89. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        51 

wretched.  Walpole  protested  ^  that  it  was  '  almost  as 
unintelligible  as  his  English.'  He  had  no  bons  mots. 
He  did  not  even  talk  much.  Grimm  found  ^  him 
heavy,  and  Madame  du  Deffand  dubbed  him  'the 
peasant.'  ^ 

But  to  more  serious  souls  he  was  even  as  the  Spirit 
of  the  Age.  He  had  voiced  the  new  scepticism.  He 
had  given  the  death-blow  to  miracles.  Before  his 
coming  to  Paris,  all  his  better-known  work  had  been 
done,  and  the  fame  of  it  preceded  him.  Alexander 
Street  wrote  from  Paris  to  Sir  William  Johnstone,  on 
December  16,  1762:  'When  you  have  occasion  to  see 
our  friend,  David  Hume,  tell  him  that  he  is  so  much 
worshipped  here  that  he  must  be  void  of  all  passions, 
if  he  does  not  immediately  take  post  for  Paris.  In 
most  houses  where  I  am  acquainted  here,  one  of  the 
first  questions  is,  "Do  you  know  M.  Hume  whom  we 
all  admire  so  much?"  I  dined  yesterday  at  Helve- 
tius's,  where  this  same  M.  Hume  interrupted  our  con- 
versation very  much.'  ^ 

His  influence  was,  in  truth,  greater  in  France  than 
in  England  ;   for  the  temper  of  English  literature  never  ^y/ 

became  openly  rationalistic.  Deism  itself  was  living 
a  subterranean  existence ;  for  the  authority  of  such 
powerful    men    as    Johnson    and   Burke   ran    directly 

1  Letters  6.  298 ;  20  September  1765. 

^  Correspondance  Litteraire,  Paris  1829,  5.  4  :  'II  est  lourd,  il  n'a  ni  chaleur, 
ni  gr4ce,  ni  agrement  dans  I'esprit.' 
'  Lettres  a  Walpole  1,  passim. 
*  Burton's  Life  of  Hume  2.  168  n. 


52  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

counter  to  it.  But  in  France  all  sails  were  set,  and 
men's  faces  turned  towards  'unpath'd  waters,  un- 
dreamed shores.'  To  the  'free'  thought  that  was 
becoming  ever  freer  and  now  drifting  towards  all 
manner  of  negation,  Hume  came  as  a  high  priest,  an 
acknowledged  pontiff.  He  was  the  man  whom  the 
King  delighted  to  honour,  whose  praises  were  lisped 
by  the  King's  children,  who  was  approved  by  Voltaire, 
petted  by  all  the  women  and  revered  by  all  the  men. 
In  less  than  two  years,  Walpole  finds  him  ^  '  the  mode,' 
'fashion  itself  ;  he  is  'treated  with  perfect  veneration,' 
and  his  works  held  to  be  the  'standards  of  writing.' 
Hume  himself  writes  to  Fergusson  ^  that  he  over- 
heard an  elderly  gentleman, '  esteemed  one  of  the  clever- 
est and  most  sensible'  of  men,  boasting  that  he  had 
caught  sight  of  Hume  that  day  at  court.^  At  last 
they  pay  him  the  compliment  (Madame  Geoffrin 
leading  off,  no  doubt)  of  'bantering'  him  and  telling 
droll  stories  of  him.  He  begins  to  fear  that  the  great 
ladies  are  taking  him  too  much  from  the  society  of 
d'Alembert,  Buffon,  Marmontel,  Diderot,  and  the 
rest.'' 

Among  the  distinguished  women  in  Paris  who  wooed 
him   were  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  Madame  du  Bocage, 

^  Letters  6,  passim.     Cf.  Grimm,  op.  cit.,  5.  3-4. 

2  Burton's  Hume  2.  173 ;   9  November  1673. 

'  An  Englishman  in  Paris  wrote  to  the  Eari  Marshall  of  Scotland,  *  L'on 
regarde  le  bonheur  de  I'y  voir  comme  un  des  plus  doux  fruits  de  la  paix.' 
Letters  to  Hume,  p.  63 ;   4  January  1764. 

*  Burton's  Hume  2.  181. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        53 

who  sent  him  her  works,  and  the  Marquise  de  Boufl3ers, 
who  made  no  secret  of  her  fondness  for  the  British. 
This  lady  once  cherished  a  '  petite  flamme '  ^  for  Beau- 
clerk,  Johnson's  gay  friend,  and  even  crossed  the 
path  of  the  Lexicographer  himself;  for  it  was  she 
whom  Johnson,  like  a  squire  of  dames,  gallantly  es- 
corted to  her  coach,  and  afterwards  honoured  with  a 
letter.  The  sentimental  homage  which  she  paid  to 
Hume  incurred  the  contempt  of  Madame  du  Deffand, 
who  sneered  at  her  worship  of  false  gods,  and  made 
her  miserable  by  leading  others  to  denounce  her  idol.^ 
Madame  de  BoufBers  played  a  prominent  part  in 
the  great  quarrel  between  Hume  and  Rousseau,  which 
involved  many  of  the  most  prominent  persons  men- 
tioned in  this  chapter.  The  story,  which  has  been 
frequently  told,  may  be  briefly  dismissed.^  The  union 
by  which  the  sentimentalist  gave  himself  in  charge  to 
the  rationalist,  might  well  have  furnished  a  Hogarth 
with  a  subject  for  an  allegorical  group  representing 
Scotch  solidity  and  Gallic  perversity.  Hume,  through 
Madame  de  Boufflers,  had  assured  Rousseau  that  he 
could  find  in  England  appreciation,  friends,  and  a  true 


'  Du  Deffand's  Lettres  a  Walpole  3.  591. 

*  Lettres  a  Walpole  1.  232 ;  5  March  1767,  et  passim. 

3  See  Burton's  Life  of  Hume;  Letters  addressed  to  Hume  (1849) ;  Private 
Correspondence  of  Hume  (1820) ;  Letters,  ed.  T.  Murray  (1841) ;  and  Exposi 
succinct  de  la  Contestation  .  .  .  entre  M.  Hume  et  M.  Rousseau  (1766). 
The  simplest  narratives  for  the  general  reader  are  in  Segur's  Julie  de 
Lespinasse,  chapter  7,  and  in  Collins's  Voltaire,  Montesquieu,  and  Rousseau 
in  England,  pp.  182  ff. 


54  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

home;  and  the  ill-assorted  pair  accordingly  departed 
from  Paris  early  in  1776.  It  was  not  long  before  wild 
letters  reached  the  salons.^  The  two  philosophers  were 
hurling  epithets  at  each  other,  scelerat!  traitre! 

The  most  immediate  cause  of  their  rupture  was  a 
letter,  written  by  Walpole,  to  amuse  Madame  Geoffrin's 
coterie.  It  purported  to  be  by  the  King  of  Prussia, 
and  invited  Rousseau  to  come  to  court  and  enjoy  his 
fill  of  persecution.  A  brief  extract  will  show  the 
character  of  this  sprightly  epistle : 

Si  vous  persistez  a  vous  creuser  I'esprit  pour  trouver 
de  nouveaux  malheurs,  choisissez-les  tels  que  vous 
voudrez.  Je  suis  roi,  je  puis  vous  en  procurer  augre 
de  vos  souhaits  :  et  ce  qui  surement  ne  vous  arrivera 
pas  vis-a-vis  de  vos  ennemis,  je  cesserai  de  vous  per- 
secuter  quand  vous  cesserez  de  mettre  votre  gloire  a 
I'etre.^ 

This  letter,  which  had  been  touched  up  by  Helvetius 
and  the  Due  de  Nivernois,  circulated  in  the  salons, 
and  at  last  found  its  way  to  England,  where  it  was 
printed  by  various  newspapers  in  April  1766.  The 
quarrel  between  Rousseau  and  Hume,  which  had  been 
threatening  for  some  weeks,  now  burst  in  fury ;  for 
Rousseau  believed  that  Hume  was  in  league  with 
Walpole  to  disgrace  him. 

^  See  Garat,  Memoires  Historiques  2.  158. 

*  See  Letters  6.  396;  12  January  1766,  for  the  complete  letter.  A  second 
letter,  in  the  character  of  Emile,  is  printed  in  Madame  du  Deffand's  Lettres 
a  Walpole  1.  3  n.  Madame  du  Deffand  persuaded  Walpole  not  to  let  it 
become  public. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        55 

Every  one  now  plunged  into  controversy  and  corre- 
spondence. Mile,  de  Lespinasse  attempts  to  soothe  feel- 
ings. D'Alembert  outlines  Hume's  campaign.  Baron 
d'Holbach  condoles.  Walpole  explains.  Madame  de 
Boufflers  fears  for  the  renown  of  philosophy.  Madame 
du  DefFand,  who  hated  everybody  concerned,  except 
Walpole,  and  whom  d'xA-lembert  accused  of  having 
stirred  up  all  the  trouble,  finally  did  as  much  as  any 
one  to  put  an  end  to  it.^  Nothing  having  been  ac- 
complished, and  the  vanity  of  all  having  been  fully 
displayed,  the  matter  subsided,  leaving  a  general  con- 
viction in  the  mind  of  each  that  all  the  others  had  con- 
ducted themselves  very  foolishly. 

Hume  never  returned  to  the  salons,  though  Mile, 
de  Lespinasse  implored  and  Madame  de  Boufflers 
protested.  It  was  to  the  latter  that  he  wrote  the  tran- 
quil letter  from  his  death-bed  'without  any  anxiety 
or  regret'  ^  which  elicited  the  admiration  even  of 
Madame  du  DefFand  ^  and  delighted  the  salons  by 
showing  that  their  favourite  could  die  like  a  philoso- 
pher.^ 

Hume's  acceptance  of  the  salon  and  its  ideals  is  in 

^  See  above,  p.  54  n.,  and  volume  one  of  her  Lettres  a  Walpole,  passim. 

2  Burton's  Life  of  Hume  2.  513. 

3  Lettres  a  Walpole  3.  253. 

^  In  October  (?)  1776,  Mrs.  Montagu  wrote  to  Beattie:  'As  I  passed  a 
good  deal  of  my  time  with  the  Litterati  at  Paris,  you  may  imagine  I  heard 
much  of  the  manner  of  Mr.  Hume's  taking  leave  of  the  world.  "Les  Philo- 
sophes"  (as  they  call  themselves)  were  pleased  that  he  supported  the  infidel 
character  with  so  much  constancy.'     M.  Forbes's  Beattie  and  his  Friends  130. 


56  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

striking  contrast  to  the  fussy  dissatisfaction  of  Horace 
Walpole.  'I  was  expressing  my  aversion,'  he  writes, 
'  to  disputes  :  Mr.  Hume,  who  very  gratefully  admires 
the  tone  of  Paris,  having  never  known  any  other  tone, 
said  with  great  surprise,  "Why,  what  do  you  like  if 
you  hate  both  disputes  and  whisk?'"  Walpole's 
reply  is  not  recorded.  Certainly  he  did  not  like  les 
philosophes  and  their  conversation  which  he  found 
'solemn,  pedantic,  and  seldom  animated  but  by  a 
dispute.'  ^  He  hated  authors  by  profession.  He  hated 
political  talk  (having  practical  knowledge  and  experi- 
ence of  politics).  He  hated  savants,  free  thinkers,  and 
beaux  esprits,  with  their  eternal  dissertations  on  religion 
and  government.^  'I  have  never  yet,' he  wrote  ^  to 
Montagu,  'seen  or  heard  anything  serious  that  was 
not  ridiculous.  Jesuits,  Methodists,  philosophers,  poli- 
ticians, the  hypocrite  Rousseau,  the  scoffer  Voltaire,  the 
encyclopedistes,  the  Humes,  the  Lytteltons,  the  Gren- 
villes,  the  atheist  tyrant  of  Russia,  and  the  mounte- 
bank of  history  Mr.  Pitt,  all  are  to  me  but  impostors 
in  their  various  ways.'  He  is  'sick  of  visions  and  sys- 
tems that  shove  one  another  aside  and  come  over  again 
like  the  figures  in  a  moving  picture.'  Yet  like  all 
scoffers,  he  has  nothing  to  set  up  in  the  place  of  all 
this.  He  could  not  give  his  heart  to  the  new  system, 
but  he  was  equally  incapable  of  being  loyal  to  the  old. 

1  Letters  6.  309 ;   3  October  1765. 
*  lb.,  6.  332. 
»  76.,  6.  358. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        57 

Dissatisfied  with  both,  he  laughed  at  both,  and  was 
nettled  because  he  could  find  none  in  Paris  to  laugh 
with  him.  Laughing  was  not  fashionable  in  the  salons.^ 
He  despised  the  prevalent  devotion  to  cards.  He  was 
scornfully  amused  at  the  popularity  of  the  English 
in  Paris  —  and  even  at  his  own  popularity.  '  Vous 
n'observez,'  said  Madame  du  Deffand,  'que  pour 
vous  moquer ;  vous  ne  tenez  a  rien,  vous  vous  passez 
de  tout ;  enfin,  enfin,  rien  ne  vous  est  necessaire.'  ^ 
But  there  was  one  thing  necessary  to  Walpole,  and  it 
was  the  thing  he  professed  to  despise  —  the  salon. 
Without  knowing  the  salons  he  could  not  ridicule  them. 
No  satirist  can  be  a  hermit.  So  Walpole  frequented 
the  salons,  and  vastly  enjoyed,  not  the  salons  them- 
selves, but  his  own  superiority  to  them.  It  was  at 
Madame  Geoffrin's  that  his  career  began.  He  brought 
a  note  of  introduction  from  Lady  Hervey,  met  Madame 
Geoffrin,  and  discovered  to  his  surprise  —  and  the 
reader's  —  that  he  liked  her.  She  had  sense,  '  more 
common  sense  than  he  almost  ever  met  with.'  ^  He 
notes  her  quickness  in  penetrating  character,  her 
protection  of  artists,  her  services  to  them,  and  her 
*  thousand  little  arts  and  oflSces  of  friendship,'  of  which 

1  See  Letters  6.  332 :  'Good  folks,  they  have  no  time  to  laugh.'  'M.  de 
Fontenelle,'  asked  Madame  Geoffrin  one  day,  'Vous  n'avez  jamais  ri?' 
' Non,'  he  replied, '  je  n'ai  jamais  fait  ah,  ah,  ah.'  Necker,  Nouveaux  Melanges 
1.  165.  Chesterfield's  hatred  of  laughter,  that  'shocking  distortion  of  the 
face,'  is  well-known ;  he  boasted  that  he  had  never  been  seen  to  laugh. 

2  Lettres  a  Walpole  1.577;   24  May  1769. 

3  Letters  6.  404 ;   25  January  1766. 


/ 

V 


58  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

latter  she  was  presently  to  give  him  a  specimen.  When 
he  had  an  attack  of  gout,  she  took  him  under  her  care. 
On  October  13,  1765,  he  writes  of  her  to  Lady  Hervey  : 

Madame  Geoffrin  came  and  sat  two  hours  last  night 
by  my  bedside :  ^  I  could  have  sworn  it  had  been  my 
lady  Hervey,  she  was  so  good  to  me.  It  was  with  so 
much  sense,  information,  instruction,  and  correction ! 
The  manner  of  the  latter  charms  me.  I  never  saw 
anybody  in  my  days  that  catches  one's  faults  and 
vanities  and  impositions  so  quick,  that  explains  them 
to  one  so  clearly,  and  convinces  one  so  easily.  I  never 
liked  to  be  set  right  before !  You  cannot  imagine 
how  I  taste  it !  I  make  her  both  my  confessor  and 
director,  and  begin  to  think  I  shall  be  a  reasonable 
creature  at  last,  which  I  had  never  intended  to  be. 
The  next  time  I  see  her,  I  believe  I  shall  say,  '  Oh ! 
Common  Sense,^  sit  down :  I  have  been  thinking  so 
and  so  ;  is  it  not  absurd  ? '  —  for  t'other  sense  and 
wisdom,  I  never  liked  them ;  I  shall  now  hate  them 
for  her  sake.  If  it  was  worth  her  while,  I  assure  your 
Ladyship  she  might  govern  me  like  a  child. 

The  attention  which  he  received  was  not  without 
its  effect,  and  at  last  he  was  obliged  to  admit  himself 
pleased.^  He  does  not  know  when  he  will  return  to 
England ;  and  he  dwells  with  delight  on  the  honours 
and  distinctions  he  receives. 

He  became  one  of  the  most  prominent  men  in  Parisian 
society,  and  for  a  time  eclipsed  the  reputation  of  Hume 

1  Ten  years  later  Madame  du  Deffand  gave  him  a  more  startling  illustra- 
tion of  French  motherliness.     See  Letters  9.  236. 

*  Cf.  Professor  Brunei  in  Petit  de  JuUeville's  Histoire  G.  410:  'C'est  en 
effet  la  "raison"  qu'on  reconnalt  a  Madame  Geoffrin  pour  merite  eminent.' 

»  Letters  6.  395;   11  January  1766. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        59 

himself.  The  latter  had  been  worshipped  as  a  phi- 
losopher; Walpole  reigned  as  a  wit.  The  letter  to 
Rousseau,  which  has  been  described  above,  captivated 
the  salons,  and  probably  even  made  them  laugh. 
The  jeu  d'esprit,  which  had  first  occurred  to  him  at 
Madame  Geoffrin's,  so  pleased  him  that  he  cast  it  into 
more  elaborate  form,  displayed  the  forged  letter  in  the 
salons,  and  became  famous  at  once.  'The  copies,' 
he  writes  to  Conway,  'have  spread  like  wildfire;  et 
me  void  a  la  mode.'  ^  It  was  long  before  Walpole 
heard  the  last  of  his  jest;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  it 
involved  him  in  the  controversy  between  Hume  and 
Rousseau,  and  Walpole  hated  controversy  as  much  as 
he  loved  wit.  But  for  the  moment  it  served  to  draw 
the  eyes  of  the  French  world  upon  him. 

Meanwhile,  he  had  become  intimate  with  Madame 
Geoffrin's  great  rival,  the  blind  Madame  du  Deffand, 
now  in  her  sixty-ninth  year,  who  rapidly  displaced 
Madame  Geoff rin  in  his  affections.  By  December 
1765,  he  was  supping  with  her  twice  a  week,  and  in 
January  he  wrote  Gray  his  famous  description  of  her :  ^ 

Madame  du  Deffand  was  for  a  short  time  mistress 
of  the  Regent,  is  now  very  old  and  stone-blind,  but 
retains  all  her  vivacity,  wit,  memory,  judgement, 
passions,  and  agreeableness.  She  goes  to  operas,  plays, 
suppers,  and  Versailles ;  gives  suppers  twice  a  week ; 
has  everything  new  read  to  her ;  makes  new  songs  and 
epigrams,   ay,   admirably,   and  remembers  every   one 

» lb.,  6.  396. 

2  lb.,  6.  404 ;  25  January  1766. 


60  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

that  has  been  made  these  fourscore  years.  She  corre- 
sponds with  Voltaire,  dictates  charming  letters  to  him, 
contradicts  him,  is  no  bigot  to  him  or  anybody,  and 
laughs  both  at  the  clergy  and  the  philosophers.  In  a 
dispute,  into  which  she  easily  falls,  she  is  very  warm, 
and  yet  scarce  ever  in  the  wrong :  her  judgement  on 
every  subject  is  as  just  as  possible;  on  every  point  of 
conduct  as  wrong  as  possible :  for  she  is  all  love  and 
hatred,  passionate  for  her  friends  to  enthusiasm,  still 
anxious  to  be  loved,  I  don't  mean  by  lovers,  and  a 
vehement  enemy,  but  openly.  As  she  can  have  no 
amusement  but  conversation,  the  least  solitude  and 
ennui  are  insupportable  to  her,  and  put  her  into  the 
power  of  several  worthless  people,  who  eat  her  suppers 
when  they  can  eat  nobody's  of  higher  rank ;  wink  to  one 
another,  and  laugh  at  her ;  hate  her  because  she  has 
forty  times  more  parts  —  and  venture  to  hate  her  be- 
cause she  is  not  rich.^ 

It  was  natural  that  Walpole  should  prefer  her  society 
to  Madame  Geoffrin's.  Being  Horace  Walpole,  it 
was  inevitable  that  he  should  come  to  regard  Madame 
Geoffrin's  coterie  with  disdain,  to  complain  that  it 
was  made  up  of  'pretended  beaux  esprits'  and  faux 
savants,  and  that  they  were  'very  impertinent  and 
dogmatic'  ^  Madame  herself  had  offended  him  by 
calling  him  ^  '  the  new  Richelieu '  in  reference  to  his 
numerous  conquests.  Walpole  grew  suddenly  afraid  of 
the  Geoffrin's  intimacy,  and  feared  that  he  was  becom- 
ing an  object  of  ridicule.     But  in  Madame  du  Deffand 

1  Montesquieu  wrote  her  (15  June  1751) :  '  Je  sens  qu'il  n'y  a  pas  de  lec- 
tures qui  puissent  remplacer  un  quart  d'heure  de  ces  soupers  qui  faisaient 
mes  delices.'     (Euvres  (1879),  7.  377. 

2  Letters  9.  59 ;  28  September  1774. 

'  lb.,  6.  356 ;  Walpole  had  met  this  Duke  in  Paris. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        61 

he  found  one  of  his  own  sort,  a  woman  used  to  the 
society  of  the  great  but  with  no  illusions  about  it, 
a  woman  who  ruled  her  circle  by  despising  almost 
every  one  who  came  into  it,  who  had  no  faith  in  any 
one,  and  least  of  all  in  the  authors  and  diplomats  who 
surrounded  her,  and  whose  society  she  endured  only  be- 
cause she  found  it  less  intolerable  than  her  dark  solitude. 
In  a  beautiful  letter  to  her  on  her  blindness,  which 
had  become  total  about  a  dozen  years  before  the 
period  when  we  encounter  her,  Montesquieu  reminded  ^ 
her  that  they  were  both  'small  rebel  spirits  condemned 
to  darkness.'  There  is  in  truth  something  suggestive 
of  the  powers  of  darkness  in  Madame  du  Deffand's 
pride  and  perversity.  She  was  of  a  will  never  to  sub- 
mit or  yield.  Pride  in  the  reputation  she  had  made, 
a  passionate  delight  in  conversation,  and,  above  all, 
the  horror  of  her  lonely  hours  of  introspection  deter- 
mined her  to  continue  her  salon  in  spite  of  all.  She 
did  not  fail.  But  a  blow  hardly  less  grievous  had 
yet  to  fall.  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  on  whose  assistance 
she  had  leaned,  had  caught  the  secret  of  her  success, 
and  was  forming  a  coterie  of  her  own,  an  inner  circle 
within  Madame  du  Deffand's.  When  the  blind  woman 
learned  of  her  assistant's  treachery,  she  broke  with 
her,  and  Mile,  de  Lespinasse  departed,  carrying  with 
her  d'Alembert,  adored  of  Madame  du  Deffand,  and 
his  friends,  the  flower  of  the  flock. 

1  Montesquieu,   (Euvres  (1879),  7.  400;   13  September  1752.     'Ce  qui 
dolt  nous  consoler,  c'est  que  ceux  qui  voient  clair  ne  sont  pour  cel&  lumineux.' 


62  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Even  then  the  dauntless  old  woman  would  not  give 
up.  The  aged  sibyl  in  her  'tonneau'  ^  at  the  Convent 
Saint  Joseph  could  still  attract  the  curious  and  the 
clever.  Blind  as  she  was,  her  '  portraits '  of  character 
were  better  than  Madame  Geoffrin's,  —  who  excelled 
in  portraits,  —  and  the  clarity  of  her  vision  was  sur- 
passed only  by  the  crispness  of  her  phrasing.  At 
sixty-eight,  she  had  an  eager  curiosity  about  her  own 
times  ^  that  was  a  stimulus  to  youth.  To  speak  with 
her  was  to  witness  the  triumph  of  mind. 

But  her  heart  was  as  dust  and  ashes  within  her. 
About  her  she  could  feel  only  duplicity  and  hatred ;  ^ 
she  had  no  faith  in  man  or  in  God,  She  considered 
her  friends  as  those  who  would  not  kill  but  would 
look  on  while  others  killed.^  The  springs  of  happiness 
and  hope  had  gone  dry.     And  always  the  spectre  of 

^  This  description  of  herself  'dans  le  coin  d'un  convent'  she  sent  to 
Madame  de  Boufflers : 

Dans  son  tonneau 
On  voit  une  vieille  sibylle 

Dans  son  tonneau. 
Qui  n'a  sur  les  os  que  la  peau. 
Qui  jamais  ne  jeflna  Vigile, 
Qui  rarement  lit  I'Evangile 
Dans  son  tonneau. 
—  From  G.  Maugras,  La  Marquise  de  Boufflers,  p.  101. 
2  '  Madame  du  Defland  ...  is  delicious ;   that  is,  as  often  as  I  can  get 
her  fifty  years  back,  but  she  js  as  eager  about  what  happens  every  day  as  I 
am  about  the  last  century.'     Walpole,  Letters  6.  367;    2  December  1765. 

'  D'Alembert  called  her  'The  Viper,'  and  told  Hume  that  she  hated 
everybody,  especially  great  men.     Letters  to  Hume,  p.  201. 

*  *Ceux  par  qui  on  n'a  pas  craindre  d'etre  assassine,  mais  qui  laisseraient 
faire  les  assassins.'     Montesquieu,  (Euvres  (1879)  7.  379. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        63 

Ennui  steals  behind  her,  and  casts  its  shadow  over  her 
withered  soul.  Literature  no  longer  interests  or 
amuses  ;  she  finds  philosophy  poisoned  by  affectation  ;  ^ 
she  is  bored  by  all  historians,  and  is  glad  when  she 
can  lay  down  the  first  volume  of  Gibbon.^  She  hears 
Gluck's  Orphee,  and  is  bored.  She  hears  The  Barber 
of  Seville,  and  is  bored.^  She  reads  the  Iliad,  and  is 
bored.*  There  is  nothing  in  her  life  that  does  not  feel 
this  blight. 

And  then,  in  the  late  evening  of  her  days,  a  miracle 
occurred.  The  dry  branch  budded  and  bloomed. 
In  the  person  of  Walpole,  with  his  chill  though  delicate 
cynicism  (so  like  her  own),  romance  burst  into  her  life, 
and  she  knew  love  and  the  pain  of  love.  Her  passion 
for  the  Englishman  twenty  years  her  junior  transcends 
all  comparison.  It  has  in  it  the  tenderness  of  age  with- 
out its  resignation,  and  the  insistence  of  youth  without 
its  joy.  It  wreaks  itself  in  protestations,  reproaches, 
and  demands  which  it  knows  must  be  futile.  In 
Madame  du  Deffand's  letters  to  Walpole,  recently 
published  in  their  entirety,^  there  is  a  strong  under- 
current which  moves  relentlessly  to  tragedy  —  tragedy 
that  is  no  less  poignant  because  its  protagonist  is  an 
old  woman  and  its  theme  the  progress  of  a  slow  despair. 

To  Walpole  all  this  was  a  source  of  great  uneasiness. 

^  Necker,  Nouveaux  Melanges  1.  79  :  '  Madame  du  Defan  [sic]  accusait  tous 
les  penseurs  d'affectation.' 

2  Lettres  a  Walpole  3.  319,  et  passim.  '  lb.  3.  77. 

*  lb.  2.  373 ;  cf .  3.  203.     'Toute  espece  de  lecture  m'ennuie.' 

*  Edited  by  Mrs.  Paget  Toynbee,  London,  1912.     There  are  838  letters. 


64  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Like  most  superior  folk,  he  feared  the  world.  He 
feared  that  letters  might  be  intercepted,  that  Madame 
du  Deffand  might  talk;  that  the  story  might  become 
public ;  that  he  might  become  an  object  of  ridicule  — 
and  ridicule  was  to  him  a  hell.  He  urged  upon  Madame 
du  Deffand  the  necessity  of  reticence.  He  was  crush- 
ingly  persistent.  The  aged  woman  did  her  best  to 
smother  her  feelings,  but  she  could  not  altogether 
smother  her  resentment : 

J'ai  une  veritable  amitie  pour  vous,  vous  le  savez, 
et  quoique  vous  vous  en  soyez  souvent  trouve  im- 
portune, que  vous  ayez  fait  tout  votre  possible  et 
meme  tout  ce  qui  est  inimaginahle  pour  detruire  cette 
amitie,  je  suis  persuadee  que  vous  n'etes  point  fache 
qu'elle  subsiste.  ...  Et  comment  est-il  possible  qu'un 
aussi  bon  homme  que  vous  veuille  tourmenter  une  si 
faible  creature  que  moi,  de  qui  vous  ne  pouvez  jamais 
craindre  aucun  mal,  ni  qui  puisse  vous  faire  encourir 
aucun  ridicule  ni  aucun  blame  ?  ^ 

Walpole's  letters  to  Madame  du  Deffand  arc  fortu- 
nately not  preserved;  but  one  imagines  that  he  was 
bored  by  this  strain.  To  him  Madame  du  Deffand 
was  an  aristocratic  French  woman,  a  match  for  him  in 
wit,  frankness,  and  cynicism,  who  could  provide  him 
with  that  social  life  which,  like  her,  he  affected  to 
despise  but  could  not  abandon.  He  had  admired  her 
capacity  for  disillusion,  and  now  she  was  the  victim 
of  an  illusion,  and  he  was  the  object  of  it.  The  situa- 
tion was  unusual. 

»  Lettres  a  Walpole  1.  167;  14  November  1766. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        65 

But  though  Walpole  could  not  respond,  he  did  not 
break  with  her,  or  care  to  break.  When,  in  1775,  he 
visited  her,  for  the  third  time,  she  showered  him  with 
so  many  engagements  that  he  needed  'the  activity  of 
a  squirrel  and  the  strength  of  a  Hercules '  to  go  through 
with  them.^  He  was  pleased.  He  asserted  that 
Madame  du  Deffand  was  a  star  in  the  East  well  worth 
coming  to  adore. ^  With  a  literary  friendship  that  dis- 
played itself  in  salons,  in  dedications  of  books,  and  in 
temperate  letters,  he  could  be  well  content.  At  her 
death  he  wrote  of  her  with  true  afiFection,  gratitude, 
and  grief.  But  she  had  longed  in  vain  for  the  expres- 
sion of  these,  and  of  more  than  these,  during  the  desola- 
tion of  her  latter  months. 

The  effect  upon  Walpole  of  this  acquaintance  with 
Madame  du  Deffand  and  her  salon  was  to  fix  in  him 
certain  characteristics  not  always  attractive.  She 
had  been  able  to  show  him  the  salon  in  the  one  aspect 
which  could  appeal  to  him ;  where  persiflage  had  not 
yielded  to  the  pedantry  of  the  new  philosophy.  In 
his  association  with  her  and  with  the  group  whose 
inspiration  she  was,  he  acquired  that  amused  tolerance 

1  Letters  9.  249 ;  8  September  1775. 

^  '  If  possible  she  is  more  worth  visiting  than  ever ;  and  so  far  am  I  from 
being  ashamed  of  coming  hither  at  my  age,  that  I  look  on  myself  as  wiser 
than  one  of  the  Magi,  when  I  travel  to  adore  this  star  in  the  East.  The 
star  and  I  went  to  the  Opera  last  night,  and  when  we  came  from  Madame  de 
la  Valliere's,  at  one  in  the  morning,  it  wanted  to  drive  about  the  town,  be- 
cause it  was  too  early  to  set.  .  .  .  You  nurse  a  little  girl  of  four  years  old, 
and  I  rake  with  an  old  woman  of  fourscore!'  Letters  9.  256;  to  Selwyn, 
16  September  1775. 
P 


66  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

with  which  he  viewed  the  attempts  of  the  bluestock- 
ings in  England  to  rival  the  salons  which  he  had  known 
in  France. 

Among  Madame  du  Deffand's  visitors  was  the  man 
to  whom  she  referred  as  *the  famous  Mr.  Burke.' 
His  visit  to  Paris  was  of  less  than  a  month's  duration. 
Madame  du  Deffand  met  him  on  February  9,  1773;  ^ 
and  he  left  France,  apparently  on  the  first  day  of 
March. 2  Burke  had  not  come  to  Paris  to  enjoy  the 
fruits  of  his  fame  —  though  his  reputation  in  the  salons 
as  the  author  of  the  Junius  letters  ^  would  have  given 
him  a  career  —  or  to  study  the  philosophical  and  polit- 
ical principles  of  the  day.  He  had  placed  his  son 
Richard  at  Auxerre  to  learn  French ;  but  before  re- 
turning to  England  he  glanced  at  the  French  court 
and  at  the  salons.  His  attitude  towards  the  latter 
was  unique.  'It  was,'  says  Morley,^  'almost  as  though 
the  solemn  hierophant  of  some  mystic  Egyptian  temple 
should  have  found  himself  amid  the  brilliant  chatter  of 
a  band  of  reckless,  keen-tongued  disputants  of  the 
garden  or  the  porch  at  Athens.'  Yet  any  seriousness 
of  manner  which  he  may  have  displayed  exalted  him  in 
the  eyes  of  the  philosophers.  Madame  du  Deffand, 
though  she  afterwards  learned  to  despise  his  writing 


1  LeHres  a  Walpole  2.  476. 

2  lb.  2.  484. 

'  lb.  i.  479 ;   '  II  y  a  des  gens  ici  qui  I'appellent  Junius.' 
*  J.  Morley,  Burke,  p.  67. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        67 

as  verbose,  diffuse,  obscure,  and  affected,^  liked  him 
at  once.  'II  me  parait  avoir  infiniment  d'esprit,' 
she  writes,"  and  again,  'II  est  tres  aimable.'  She  gave 
a  supper  for  him,  and  exerted  herself  to  assemble  the 
most  distinguished  and  clever  members  of  her  circle.^ 
She  had  him  invited  to  Madame  de  Luxembourg's, 
where  he  heard  La  Harpe  read  a  new  tragedy  in  verse, 
Les  Barmecides.^  He  also  talked  with  Madame  du 
Deffand  of  a  new  book,  Essai  Generate  de  Tactique  ^ 
by  the  Count  de  Guibert,  dealing  with  the  state  of 
politics  and  military  science  in  Europe.  This  elabo- 
rate and  enthusiastic  treatise,  which  contained  an 
attack  on  idle  sovereigns  and  corrupt  courts,  appealed 
to  Burke ;  and,  at  Madame  du  Deffand's  request,  he 
carried  a  copy  of  it  to  Walpole.  Burke  knew  the 
same  author's  tragedy,  Le  Connetable  de  Bourbon,^ 
a  fact  worth  mention  as  indicating  an  acquaintance 
with  the  salon  of  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  whose  lover  the 
author  was.     Burke  must  have  heard  Guibert  read  this 

1  Lettres  a  Walpole  3.  589,  in  criticism  of  his  Speech  on  the  Independence  of 
Parliament,  11  February  1780. 

2/6.  2.  479;  481. 

'  'Je  lui  donne  une  compagnie  que  j'ai  tiche  de  lui  assortir;  un  M.  du 
Buc,  qui  est  aussi  un  grand  esprit,  le  Comte  de  Broglio,  I'Eveque  de  Mirepoix, 
Madame  de  Cambis,  les  Caraman,  etc'  Lettres  a  Walpole  2.  479 ;  24 
February  1773. 

*  Printed  in  1778. 

5  By  J.  A.  H.  de  Guibert,  Paris  1773. 

*  See  Lettres  a  Walpole  2.  488.  He  had  spoken  of  it  to  Walpole,  and 
evidently  preferred  it  to  La  Harpe's  tragedy  —  which  did  not  please  Madame 
du  Deffand.  The  tragedy,  which  was  widely  known  from  the  author's 
reading  of  it  in  the  salons,  was  acted  in  1775. 


68  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

play  aloud,  for  it  had  not  yet  been  acted  or  published, 
and  the  reading  may  well  have  occurred  at  Mile,  de 
Lespinasse's.  Again,  it  may  have  been  in  that  salon 
that  Burke  attacked  the  philosophy  of  Hume,^  and 
defended  Beattie  against  the  sneers  of  the  free  thinkers 
—  a  course  that  must  have  taxed  his  abundant  in- 
genuity as  much  as  his  defective  French. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  the  conversation 
that  passed  between  Burke  and  Walpole  after  the 
former's  return  to  England.  They  met,  and  it  would 
seem  that  Burke  expressed  strong  opinions  on  the 
growing  atheism  of  France,  and  told  of  his  attempt  to 
defend  the  Christian  system,  for  Walpole  wrote  ^ 
to  the  Countess  of  Upper  Ossory :  'Mr.  Burke  is 
returned  from  Paris,  where  he  was  so  much  the  mode 
that,  happening  to  dispute  with  the  philosophers, 
it  grew  the  fashion  to  be  Christians.  St.  Patrick  him- 
self did  not  make  more  converts.'  But  whatever  effect 
Burke  may  have  had  upon  the  freethinkers  of  Paris, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  their  effect  upon  him.  The 
amazing  downrush  of  principles,  religious,  philosophi- 
cal, and  political,  which  he  witnessed  in  France  con- 
firmed him  in  that  natural  conservatism,  that  desire 
'never  wholly  or  at  once  to  depart  from  antiquity' 
to  which  he  was  becoming  more  and  more  passionately 
devoted  as  the  great  French  crisis  drew  on. 

1  See  Bisset,  Lije  of  Burke  (1798),  p.  158.  Morley  thinks  it  was  in  Mile, 
de  Lespinasse's  salon  that  Burke  met  Diderot. 

2  Letters  8.  252;   11  March  1773. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        69 

The  spectacle  of  Burke  converting  the  philosophers 
to  Christianity  sinks  into  pale  insignificance  beside 
Yorick  Sterne's  conversion  of  Madame  de  Vence  from 
the  perils  of  deism  —  an  incident  familiar  to  every 
reader  of  The  Sentimental  Journey.  It  was  in  the 
winter  of  1762  that  Sterne  made  his  entry  into  the 
salons,  and  discovered  those  guiding  principles  of 
compliment,  flattery,  and  general  philandering,  which 
enabled  him  to  win  all  the  esprits,  and,  incidentally,  to 
put  an  end  to  the  deism  of  Madame  de  Vence.  Seated 
on  a  sofa  beside  the  lady,  whose  waning  beauty  should 
have  made  her  a  deist  five  years  before,  he  revealed 
the  dangers  to  which  beauty,  particularly  in  deists, 
was  exposed,  and  dwelt  on  the  defense  provided  by 
religious  sentiments.  '"We  are  not  adamant,"  said 
I,  taking  hold  of  her  hand  —  "and  there  is  need  of  all 
restraints,  till  age  in  her  own  time  steals  in  and  lays 
them  on  us  —  but,  my  dear  lady,"  said  I,  kissing  her 

hand  —  "'tis  too  —  too  soon "   I  declare  I  had 

the  credit  all  over  Paris  of  unperverting  Madame  de 

V .       She    afiirmed    to    Mons.    D ^    and    the 

Abbe  M ^  that  in  one  half-hour  I  had  said  more 

for  revealed  religion  than  all  their  Encyclopedia  had 
said  against  it  —  I  was  lifted  directly  into  Madame 

de  V 's  Coterie  —  and   she  put  off   the  epocha  of 

deism  for  two  years.' 

Yorick  learned,  too,  the  importance  of  self-oblitera- 
tion.    'I    had    been    misrepresented    to    Madame    de 

*  Diderot.  *  Morellet. 


70  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Q as    an    esprit  —  Madame    de    Q was    an 

esprit  herself :  she  burnt  with  impatience  to  see  me, 
and  hear  me  talk.  I  had  not  taken  my  seat  before  I 
saw  she  did  not  care  a  sous  whether  I  had  any  wit 
or  no  —  I  was  let  in,  to  be  convinced  she  had.  — • 
I  call  heaven  to  witness  I  never  once  opened  the  door 
of  my  lips.' 

Such  anecdotes  may  not  give  us  facts,^  but  they 
record  something  quite  as  useful,  Sterne's  impression 
of  the  salon,  and  are  a  reliable  indication  of  his  general 
conduct  there.  The  wits  of  Paris  found  the  most 
perfect  resemblance  between  Sterne  and  his  books. 
Garat  asserts  ^  that  between  seeing  the  author  and 
reading  his  works  there  was  almost  no  difference  at  all. 
There  are  peculiarly  Shandian  touches  in  some  of  his 
letters  to  Garrick,  as  his  mention  ^  of  the  Baron 
d'Holbach,  'one  of  the  most  learned  men  over  here,  the 
great  protector  of  wits  and  the  Sgavans  who  are  no 
wits.'  Baron  d'Holbach  was  the  'maitre  d'hotel'  of 
philosophy,  friend  of  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  and  Diderot, 
with  a  salon  of  his  own,  in  which  he  presided  over  a 
school  of  physicists  who  held  a  new  theory  of  nature. 
Four  years  later  Walpole  ^  eschewed  this  '  pigeon- 
house'  of  savants  and  their  system  of  antediluvian 
deluges    invented    to    prove    the    eternity    of    matter. 

^  Professor  Cross,  however,  considers  them  fairly  reliable.  Life  of  Sterne, 
p.  287. 

^  D.  Garat,  Memoir es  Historiques  sur  le  XVIII'  Siecle  2.  136. 

3  31  January  1762. 

*  Letters  6.  370;   2  December  1765, 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        71 

Sterne,  who  was  more  affable  than  Walpole,  though  no 
less  sharp-sighted,  enjoyed  himself  there  and  became 
a  friend  of  Diderot  (to  whom  he  presented  a  collection 
of  English  books). 

It  is  probable  that  Sterne  made  a  pretty  complete 
tour  of  the  salons,  and  there  is  good  reason  for  assum- 
ing that  at  Madame  Geoffrin's^  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Mile,  de  Lespinasse.  This  young  woman, 
who  was  about  to  become  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
hostesses  in  Paris,^  was  eagerly  appreciative  of  the 
emotional  aspect  of  Sterne's  work.  Compact  of  passion 
and  nerves,  a  disciple  of  Rousseau,  a  'daughter  of  the 
Sun,'  ^  and  a  sort  of  female  counterpart  of  Byron,  she 
ate  her  heart  out,  was  consumed  with  hopeless  love 
for  three  men  at  once,  and  attempted  suicide,  quite 
in  the  familiar  manner  of  a  later  school.  To  love  and 
pain,  to  heaven  and  hell,  she  determined  to  devote 
herself.^  Loathing  the  world  where  'fools  and  autom- 
atons abound,'  she  must  construct  the  world  of 
romance  for  herself. 

Shandyism  won  her  by  its  frank  display  of  emotion. 
There  were  aspects  of  it  which  she  could  never  have 

y     1  Cf .  Cross,  Life  of  Sterne,  p.  282. 

2  The  rise  of  Julie  de  Lespinasse  (1732-1776)  to  a  position  of  first  impor- 
tance in  Parisian  society  is  a  thrilling  story.  See  Segur,  Julie  de  Lespinasse. 
The  account  of  her  break  with  Madame  du  Deffand  whose  'companion' 
she  had  been,  is  referred  to  above,  p.  61.  Walpole  {Letters  9.  59)  calls  her 
'a  pretended  bel  esprit,'  and  begs  Conway  not  to  allow  himself  to  be  taken  to 
her  salon,  frequented  by  Englishmen,  lest  he  offend  Madame  du  Deffand. 

'  Necker,  Melanges  2.  287. 

*  Letters  to  the  Count  de  Guibert  (1809)  2.  233. 


72  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

appreciated,  its  wayward  humour  and  insincerity,  its 
sprightliness  and  its  dirt ;  but  the  tears  and  the  ten- 
derness she  understood  by  instinct.  The  loves  of 
Yorick  and  EHza,  never  very  popular  in  England, 
appealed  to  her  as  after  the  order  of  nature,  and  no 
doubt  reminded  her  of  her  own  relations  with 
d'Alembert. 

After  the  appearance  of  the  Sentimental  Journeyy 
Mile,  de  Lespinasse  wrote  two  chapters  ^  in  imitation 
of  that  work  which,  though  reproducing  only  such 
features  of  Sterne's  manner  as  she  understood,  are  of 
great  importance  as  showing  the  influence  of  Sterne 
in  the  salons.  In  these  the  French  sentimentalist 
has  adopted  the  Englishman's  manner  in  order  to  pay 
court  to  her  benefactor,  Madame  Geoffrin.  The 
chapters  record  two  examples  ^  of  the  elder  woman's 
charity.  The  first  of  these,  the  incident  of  the  broken 
vase,  is  attributed  to  Sterne  himself.  Yorick  is  repre- 
sented as  discovering  that  a  vase  which  he  has  re- 
cently purchased  has  a  broken  lid.  The  workmen  who 
have  just  delivered  the  treasure  implore  him  to  have 
mercy  upon  their  fellow  who  broke  it,  whose  accident 
has  so  alarmed  him  that  he  has  not  dared  to  appear. 

^  See  Lettres  de  Mile,  de  Lespinasse  .  .  .  suivies  de  deux  chapifres  dans  le 
genre  du  Voyage  sentimental  de  Sterne,  par  le  meme  Auteur.  Paris  1809; 
3.  261. 

^  The  authenticity  of  these  stories  is  vouched  for  by  the  first  editor  of 
Mile,  de  Lespinasse's  Letters  (1809),  op.  cit.  1.  xiv,  and  by  the  author  of  the 
'Portrait'  in  Eloges  de  Madame  Geoffrin  (1812),  p.  47.  Mile,  de  Lespinasse 
read  the  chapters  aloud  in  Madame  Geoffrin's  salon. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        73 

He  is  now  fairly  in  the  road  to  ruin.  Pleased  with  the 
sympathetic  distress  of  the  brother  artisans,  Yorick 
inquires  into  the  case,  and  is  able,  through  La  Fleur, 
to  relieve  the  poor  fellow's  misery.  He  ministers  to  the 
needs  of  a  wife  and  four  children,  and  rewards  the 
kindly  friends  with  a  generous  pourboire. 

The  scene  of  the  second  chapter  is  Madame  Geoffrin's 
salon.  Here  Sterne  is  represented  as  hearing  that 
lady  tell  the  story  of  her  milkwoman.  The  pathetic 
death  of  a  cow  (sole  prop  of  the  milkwoman's  family) 
recalls  the  incidents  of  the  dead  ass,  and  of  Maria  de 
Moulines  and  her  goat  in  the  Sentimental  Journey ;  but 
there  are  serious  deficiencies.  Sterne,  like  Mile,  de 
Lespinasse,  would  have  dwelt  on  the  sentimental 
pleasure  of  presenting  the  milkwoman  with  two  con- 
solatory cows,  but  he  would  not  have  missed  the 
humour  in  the  fact  that  the  cream  afterwards  delivered 
to  Madame  Geofifrin  was  not  fit  to  drink.  Mile,  de 
Lespinasse  shows  her  appreciation  of  Sterne's  sen- 
timentalism  and  her  ignorance  of  his  Shandyism. 

This  imitation  of  Sterne  seems  to  be  the  chief  record 
in  French  of  Yorick's  impression  on  the  salon.  If 
it  is  a  reliable  view  —  and  there  seems  to  be  no  good 
reason  for  rejecting  it  —  it  is  clear  that  Sterne  pre- 
ferred to  appear  in  the  drawing-room  of  Paris  without 
his  cap  and  bells.  He  realized  perhaps  that  the  way 
to  win  the  hearts  of  French  ladies  was  with  his  warm 
heart  and  his  tearful  eye,  and  not  by  the  sudden 
caprice  of  his  humour.     It  was  Sterne  the  emotional 


74  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

epicure,  the  professed  philanderer,  and  not  Yorick  the 
jester,  who  was  known  to  the  salons ;  and  in  thus 
exploiting  his  sentimentalism,  he  continued  and  em- 
phasized one  aspect  of  the  work  of  Rousseau,  and, 
with  Richardson,  became  one  of  the  chief  foreign  in- 
fluences exerted  upon  the  romantic  movement  in 
France. 

But  it  was  not  till  the  time  of  Gibbon  that  any  Eng- 
lish author  duplicated  the  success  of  Hume  in  the 
Parisian  salon,  for  none  had  so  nearly  satisfied  the 
conditions  required  of  an  esprit  fort.  Gibbon  was  the 
destroyer  of  ancient  superstitions,  who  had  attacked 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  with  a  new  weapon.  The 
scepticism  out  of  which  Hume  had  made  a  philosophy 
became  in  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall  a  new  historical 
method  as  deadly  as  it  was  disguised.  For  Gibbon, 
as  for  Hume,  the  salon  was  a  sort  of  Valhalla,  at  once 
a  reward  and  an  arena,  in  which,  surrounded  by  his 
peers,  he  was  to  continue  his  slaughterous  career. 
Success  came  at  once.  He  was  more  popular  than 
Hume,  for  he  did  not  have  the  social  defects  which 
had,  after  a  time,  somewhat  dimmed  the  lustre  of 
Hume's  success.  He  had,  for  example,  no  difficulty 
with  the  French  language,  a  tongue  which  he  had 
spoken  from  his  youth. ^  Madame  du  Deffand  found 
him  as  French  as  her  closest  friends, ^  and  Madame 

1  His  father  had  sent  him  to  Lausanne  at  the  age  of  sixteen.     His  first 
literary  venture,  his  Essai  sur  I' Etude  de  la  Litter ature,  was  in  French. 
»  Lettres  d  Walpole  3.  342 ;  8  June  1777. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        75 

Necker  rebuked  him  for  allowing  a  Frenchman  to 
translate  his  History  when  he  could  have  done  it 
better  himself.^  Moreover,  though  he  was  an  uglier 
duckling  than  Hume,  his  manners  had  a  pomposity 
which  did  not  encourage  familiarity.  *I1  ne  tombe  pas 
dans  les  memes  ridicules,'  said  Madame  du  Deffand, 
J  who  regarded  it  as  no  slight  achievement  to  avoid 
becoming  a  fool  when  surrounded  by  fools.^ 

Something  of  Gibbon's  success  was  due  to  a  period 
of  preparation,  as  it  were,  an  earlier  career  in  the 
salons  fourteen  years  before.  He  had  received  his 
training  in  1763  when,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  he  had 
come  to  Paris  to  meet  the  literary  world,  to  member- 
ship in  which  he  felt  himself  entitled  by  his  Essai  sur 
VEtude  de  la  Litterature,  a  work  which  had  achieved 
the  dignity  of  a  second  edition.  Lady  Hervey  had  fur- 
nished him  with  an  introduction  to  Madame  Geofirin, 
and  he  found  a  place  weekly  at  her  famous  Wednes- 
day dinners.  He  visited  other  salons,  notably  those 
of  Madame  du  Bocage  and  of  the  Baron  d'Holbach, 
who  had  entertained  Sterne  the  year  before.  Helve- 
tius  treated  him  like  a  friend.^  It  was  a  sufficient 
success  for  a  young  man.  It  was  not  to  be  expected 
that  he  should  leave  an  impress  upon  Parisian  society 
at  this  time,  nor  did  he ;   but  there  is  little  doubt  that 


^  Gibbon,  Miscellaneous  Works  2.  247;  21  April  1781. 

2  Lettres  a  Walpole,  3.  367 ;  21  September  1777. 

3  Private  Letters,  ed.  Prothero,  1.  29;    12  February  1763.      Cf.  Memoirs, 
ed.  Hill,  p.  153. 


76  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

that  society  contributed  in  some  measure  to  his  lucidity 
of  vision  and  to  the  prevaiHng  spirit  of  disillusion 
for  which  he  was  presently  to  be  famous. 

When  he  returned  to  Paris  in  1777  he  shone  in  no 
reflected  light,  for  the  publication  of  the  first  volume 
of  his  Decline  and  Fall  in  the  preceding  year  had  al- 
ready made  him  a  European  reputation.  The  book 
was  almost  immediately  translated  into  French.  The 
spirit  of  the  work,  and  in  particular  the  famous  explana- 
tion of  the  development  of  Christianity,  appealed  to 
the  philosophers.  The  indignant  but  somewhat  in- 
effectual attacks  of  pious  English  folk  upon  the  ration- 
alistic historian  pleased  them  hardly  less.  Gibbon's 
reception  was  all  that  he  could  desire.  *I  was  intro- 
duced,' he  tells  us  in  his  Memoirs,  'to  the  first  names 
and  characters  of  France,  who  distinguished  me  by 
such  marks  of  civility  and  kindness  as  gratitude  will 
not  suffer  me  to  forget  and  modesty  will  not  allow  me 
to  enumerate.'  According  to  his  own  account,^  he 
shone  in  disputes,  and  got  his  great  victory  over  the 
Abbe  Mably  in  the  discussion  concerning  the  republican 
form  of  government.  But  in  general,  the  French  were 
struck  by  his  affability.     Madame  du  Deffand  could 

^  Walpole's  account  of  him  in  dispute  is  less  flattering.  '  He  coloured ; 
all  his  round  features  squeezed  themselves  into  sharp  angles ;  he  screwed  up 
his  button-mouth  and  [rapped]  his  snuffbox.  ...  I  well  knew  his  vanity, 
even  about  his  ridiculous  face  and  person,  but  thought  he  had  too  much 
sense  to  avow  it  so  palpably.'  Letters  11.  376;  27  January  1781.  Gibbon 
avoided  disputes  with  Johnson,  and  Boswell  {Life  2.  348)  assumed  that  he 
feared  'a  competition  of  abilities.' 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        77 

find  no  other  fault  in  him  than  his  abiding  desire  to 
(\[  please,  and  observed  that  beaux  esprits  had  the  same 
fascination  for  him  that  the  weapons  of  Odysseus  had 
for  the  disguised  Achilles.  At  times  he  seemed  servile, 
and  she  was  on  the  point  of  telling  him  to  comfort 
himself  with  the  reflection  that  he  deserved  to  be  a 
Frenchman.^ 

But  though  he  was  much  in  the  company  of  Madame 
du  Deffand,  that  'agreeable  young  lady  of  eighty- 
two,'  ^  to  whom  Walpole  had  given  him  a  letter  of 
introduction ;  though  he  found  the  best  company  in 
Paris  in  her  salon,  and  made  numerous  visits  with 
her  (notably  to  the  Marquise  de  Boufflers') ;  though 
he  constantly  took  supper  with  her  '  when  she  happened 
to  be  supping  at  home,  it  was  not  with  her  that  he 
was  most  intimate  during  his  triumphant  months  in 
Paris.  His  name  will  ever  be  linked  with  that  of 
Madame  Necker.  His  relations  with  her  had  begun 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  before,  and  may  be  read, 
in  a  somewhat  ameliorated  version,  in  his  own  Memoirs; 
the  lady's  story  is  more  fully  set  forth  by  the  Vicomte 
d'Haussonville  in  Le  Salon  de  Madame  Necker.  It 
will  suffice  to  say  here  that,  after  being  jilted  by  Gibbon, 
the  ambitious  young  Suisse  had  married  a  man  des- 
tined to  be  hardly  less  famous  in  his  own  time,  had 
moved  to  Paris,  studied,  as  it  were,  under   Madame 

1  Lettres  a  Walpole  3.  343,  351,  and  376. 

2  Private  Lettres  1.  312;   16  June  1777. 

3  Lettres  a  Walpole  3.  336. 


78  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Geoffrin,  and  at  length  opened  a  salon  of  her  own. 
Though  less  brilliantly  gifted  than  other  hostesses, 
she  was  perhaps  even  more  ambitious  than  they. 
There  is  something  modern  about  her  passion  for 
improvement.  She  was  not  unwilling  to  be  a  femme 
savante.  She  disputed  with  the  philosophers  and 
recorded  philosophical  platitudes,  along  with  gossip 
and  rules  of  grammar,  in  her  commonplace-book. 
It  may  have  been  the  literary  ambition  of  this  lady, 
it  may  have  been  her  essential  sweetness  of  character, 
it  may  have  been  some  form  of  feminine  pride,  that 
led  her  to  seek  friendship  with  the  man  who  had  once 
refused  her  his  love.  During  her  visit  to  London  in 
1776,  Hume  was  constant  in  his  attentions  to  her  and 
to  her  husband.  In  September,  after  her  return  to 
France,  she  wrote  to  him,^  urging  him  to  come  to  her : 
*C'est  a  Paris  qu'il  est  agreable  d'etre  un  grand  homme.' 
When  at  length  he  came,  she  would  no  doubt  have 
been  glad  to  'plant'  him  in  her  house,  after  the  French 
custom ;  but  Gibbon  preferred  his  freedom :  '  The 
reception  I  have  met  with  from  them,'  he  writes,^ 
Very  far  surpassed  my  most  sanguine  expectations. 
I  do  not  indeed  lodge  in  their  house  (as  it  might  excite 
the  jealousy  of  the  husband,  and  procure  me  a  letter 
de  cachet),  but  I  live  very  much  with  them,  dine  and 
sup  whenever  they  have  company,  which  is  almost 
every  day,  and  whenever  I  like  it,  for  they  are  not  in 

1  Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works  2.  178 ;   30  September  1776. 
*  Miscellaneous  Works  1.  312;  16  June  1777. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORS  IN  PARISIAN  SALONS        79 

the  least  exigeans.'  Their  satisfaction  was  no  less 
than  Gibbon's.  His  serious  conversation  delighted 
the  serious  soul  of  Madame  Necker  ^  by  its  union  of 
interest  in  details  with  enthusiasm  for  great  principles, 
and  by  the  sundry  graces  which  adorned  it. 

Madame  du  Deffand  always  felt  that  Gibbon's 
respect  for  the  standards  of  the  beaux  esprits  had  cor- 
rupted his  style.  She  heard  in  it  the  declamatory  tone 
of  the  salons ;  it  had  the  glitter  and  the  lust  for  fame 
with  which  she  was  well  acquainted.^  She  knew  of 
course  that  this  could  not  have  been  the  result  of 
Gibbon's  later  sojourn  in  Paris,  but  she  was  aware  that 
he  had  come  under  the  influence  of  the  French  salons 
during  an  earlier  visit.  Her  hypothesis,  which  ac- 
counts for  something  of  the  inflated  rhetoric  of  Gibbon, 
is  certainly  worthy  of  attention ;  and  it  may  be  noted, 
in  support  of  her  view,  that  Madame  Necker,  who  is 
a  fair  measure  of  what  the  philosophes  wanted,  found 
in  Gibbon's  style  a  'captivating  magic'  ^ 

1  She  wrote  him  in  January  1777 :  '  Votre  entretien.  Monsieur,  a  tou jours 
ete  un  grand  plaisir  de  ma  vie,  car  vous  reunissez  I'interet  pour  les  petites 
choses,  r  enthousiasme  pour  les  grandes,  Tabondance  des  idees,  a  Tattention 
pour  celles  des  autres,  et  une  legere  causticite,  ame  de  la  conversation,  a 
i'indulgence  du  moment,  la  sflrete  du  caractere  et  le  courage  de  I'amitie.' 
Gibbon,  Miscellaneous  Works  2.  193.  Madame  du  Deffand  applied  to 
Gibbon's  conversation  a  phrase  of  Fontenelle's,  'forte  de  choses.'  Lettres 
a  Walpole  3.  338;  27  May  1777. 

^  '  C'est  le  ton  de  nos  beaux  esprits :  il  n  'y  a  que  des  ornements,  de  la 
parure,  du  clinquant,  et  point  du  fond  ...  il  a,  si  je  ne  me  trompe,  une 
grande  ambition  de  celebrite ;  il  brigue  a  force  ouverte  la  faveur  de  tons  nos 
beaux  esprits.'     Lettres  a  Walpole  3. 357 ;  10  August  1777. 

'Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works  2.  247;  21  April  1781. 


80  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

When  Gibbon  left  Paris  there  was  universal  regret. 
At  the  Neckers'  they  talked  of  nothing  but  this  be- 
reavement^ and  the  hope  of  a  return.     He  went  back, 
in  pudgy  complacency,  to  his  historical  studies.     He 
had  conversed  and   even  disputed  with  the  prophets 
of  a  new  era ;   but  like  the  other  rationalists,  he  seems 
to  have  had  no  suspicion  of  the  great  change  which 
was  presently  to  make  salons  impossible.     His   igno- 
\  ranee  of  the  approaching  storm  is  a  significant  illustra- 
i  tion  of  the  fact  that  the  discussions  of  the  salon  were 
\ /]  essentially   academic,  conducted   in   happy  ignorance 
*of  the  results  which  were  destined  to  succeed  them. 

^  Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works  2.  214 ;   12  November  1777. 


PART  II 
THE  ENGLISH  SALON 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Earlier  English  Salon 

The  first  English  salons,  broadly  so  termed,  appear 
in  the  age  of  Elizabeth.  A  tradition  of  the  social 
patronage  of  letters  was  then  established  which  had  a 
short  though  brilliant  history  and  which  might,  under 
favourable  conditions,  have  become  of  permanent 
importance  to  the  literature.  It  could  not,  however, 
survive  the  period  of  the  Civil  Wars  and  the  Common- 
wealth ;  and  thus  the  earlier  English  salon,  despite  its 
promising  beginning,  goes  from  less  to  less  until  it 
disappears  altogether  about  1700.  The  later  salon 
had  no  connection  with  it;  indeed  the  eighteenth 
century  seems  to  have  been  quite  unaware  of  its 
existence.  The  earlier  institution  was  perhaps  more 
national  in  character ;  it  was  certainly  more  vital,  and 
it  will  therefore  be  profitable  to  sketch  its  history,  if 
only  for  purposes  of  contrast.  This  earlier  movement 
must  be  carefully  distinguished  from  the  larger  subject 
of  woman's  place  in  English  literature,  from  her  con- 
tribution to  and  her  growing  interest  in  it ;  above  all, 
it  must  be  distinguished  from  the  history  of  English 
jemmes  savantes.  Such  a  larger  subject  there  is,  but 
I  have  no  intention  of  treating  it  here.  My  purpose 
is  merely  to  point  out  those  social  and  literary  institu- 

83 


84  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

tions  set  up  by  English  women  which  correspond  in  a 
general  way  with  the  salons  as  described  in  the  second 
and  third  chapters  of  this  work. 

The  Elizabethan  prototype  of  the  salon  is  even 
closer  to  the  Renaissance  courts  than  the  French  salons 
themselves.  The  greatest  of  the  Elizabethan  patron- 
esses, the  Countess  of  Pembroke,  was,  even  in  her  own 
day,  compared  with  Elizabeth  Gonzaga,^  and  her  house 
at  Wilton,  which  contemporaries  refer  to  as  a  'college' 
or  'school,'  was  like  nothing  so  much  as  the  little 
academe  that  we  have  seen  to  be  characteristic  of 
Italy.  Although  the  most  distinguished  female  writer 
of  her  age,  the  Countess  of  Pembroke  was,  and  is, 
better  known  for  her  coterie  than  for  her  writings. 
'She  was,'  says  Aubrey,  'the  greatest  patronesse  of 
wit  and  learning  of  any  lady  of  her  time.'  ^  Spenser 
hailed  her  (in  true  salon  style)  as  Urania,  and  Meres 
compared  her  to  Octavia,  Virgil's  patroness.  Like 
her  brother,  she  was  enthusiastic  for  the  classical 
tradition,  and  used  her  influence  with  Kyd  and  Daniel 
to  keep  Senecan  tragedy  alive.  The  dedication  to 
Daniel's  Defence  of  Ryme  implies  that  the  book  was 
produced  under  her  immediate  inspiration.  The 
author  refers  to  Wilton  as  his  'best  schoole,'  in  the 
same  tone  in  which  Spenser  acknowledges  himself 
'bounden'  to  it  'by  many  singular  favours  and  great 

^  Nicholas  Breton's  Pilgrimage  to  Paradise,  quoted  by  Miss  Young. 
*  These  and  the  like  illustrations  are  drawn  from  Miss  Frances  Young's 
Mary  Herbert,  Countess  of  Pembroke,  London  1912. 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  85 

graces.'  Miss  Young,  the  recent  biographer  of  the 
Countess,  who  proclaims  her  'in  the  very  best  sense 
of  the  word  a  bluestocking,'  marshals  a  list  of  twenty 
works  dedicated  to  her,  and  the  list  might  be  almost 
indefinitely  extended  by  adding  to  it  the  passages  in 
Elizabethan  poetry  written  in  her  praise.  To  neglect 
the  latter  would  be  to  pass  over  some  of  the  most 
typical  utterances  of  Edmund  Spenser. 

Thus  Elizabethan  England  saw  the  salon  at  its 
finest.  With  the  ideal  of  courtly  society  numerous 
translations  of  the  Italian  classics  had  already  made 
it  familiar.  There  is  evidence  of  the  ideal  everywhere 
in  Shakespeare's  romantic  comedies.  The  preciosity 
of  the  court  of  Navarre  and  the  whole  tone  of  Loves 
Labour  s  Lost,  the  badinage  of  Benedick  and  Beatrice, 
the  poetic  dialogue  of  Lorenzo  and  Jessica  in  praise 
of  the  night,  and  even  the  mingling  of  the  courtly  and 
the  pastoral  in  the  life  of  Arden  Forest  —  these  are  all 
near  to  the  spirit  of  the  Renaissance  court  and  the 
society  with  which  we  are  dealing.  The  company  of 
gallant  men  and  gracious  women  idealized  in  Shake- 
speare's comedies  might  well  have  served  as  the  model 
of  the  salon,  had  the  seventeenth  century  fostered 
the  development  of  anything  so  courtly. 

Hardly  less  distinguished  is  the  group  of  men  who 
surrounded  Lucy,  Countess  of  Bedford.  Her  house  at 
Twickenham  Park,  famous  for  its  Holbeins  and  its 
garden,  she  loved  to  fill  with  men  of  genius.  Ben 
Jonson,  Chapman,  Davies,  Drayton,  and  Daniel  were 


86  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

all  proud  to  call  themselves  her  friend,  and  almost 
every  one  of  them  dedicated  to  her  some  work  of 
permanent  value  in  English  literature.  Jonson  ad- 
dressed to  her  a  poetical  epistle  and  three  characteris- 
tic epigrams.  His  language,  though  pompous,  is 
probably  sincere : 

Lucy,  you  brightness  of  our  sphere,  who  are 
The  Muses'  evening  as  their  morning-star.^ 

The  Countess  was  the  recipient  of  more  great  verse 
than  the  entire  group  of  bluestockings.  Daniel,  who 
celebrated  her  in  the  Vision  of  the  Twelve  Goddesses, 
has  been  called  her  poet  laureate,  and  there  would  be 
no  reason  for  rejecting  the  title  if  it  did  not  more 
properly  belong  to  John  Donne.  Not  only  did  that 
poet  write  Twicknam  Garden  in  her  honour,  and  ad- 
dress her  repeatedly  in  verse  epistles  which  praise  her 
beauty,  virtue,  and  learning  in  terms  of  the  most 
affectionate  extravagance,  but,  says  Mr.  Gosse,  owed 
to  her  the  very  revival  of  interest  in  his  art.^  Donne's 
letters  seem  to  show  that  he  submitted  poems  to  the 
judgment  of  the  Countess ;  for  she  was  herself  a  poet, 
and  is  thought  to  have  written  one  of  the  elegies  com- 
monly attributed  to  Donne.^     Certain  it  is  that  at  her 

^  Epigram  94. 

^  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Donne  1.  212.  Her  'refining'  influence  on 
Donne's  mind  and  judgment  is  particularly  noted  in  his  second  Letter  to  the 
Countess  of  Bedford. 

'  Professor  Grierson  attributes  to  her  the  poem  beginning, 
'  Death,  be  not  proud,  thy  hand  gave  not  this  blow.' 
See  his  edition  of  Donne's  poems,  2.  cxliv. 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  87 

house  he  enjoyed  the  very  type  of  society  which,  a 
century  later,  made  the  fame  of  salons.  He  always 
speaks  of  Lady  Bedford  with  the  same  gratitude  and 
awe  which  may  be  found  in  Castiglione's  praise  of 
the  Duchess  of  TJrbino ;  he  accepted  the  same  sort  of 
pecuniary  assistance  from  her  that  Frenchmen  received 
from  Madame  Geoffrin.  Nay,  more,  he  goes  to  her 
in  her  garden  that  he  may,  at  eye  and  ear. 

Receive  such  balmes  as  else  cure  everything.^ 

He  writes  to  Sir  Henry  Goodyer : 

For  her  delight  (since  she  descends  to  them)  I  had 
reserved  not  only  all  the  verses  I  should  make,  but  all 
the  thoughts  of  women's  worthiness. 

He  is  concerned  not  to  be  lightly  esteemed  'in that 
Tribe  and  that  house'  where  he  has  lived. ^ 

In  all  respects,  therefore,  the  Countess's  coterie 
.  would  seem  to  stand  just  half-way  between  court  and 
salon  —  if  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish  the  two  terms 
at  all.  If  it  is  urged  that  we  have  no  evidence  of  the 
stimulus  wrought  by  conversation  in  the  group,  it  may 
be  answered  that  even  this  lack  is  apparent  only  and 
is  due  simply  to  the  meagreness  of  contemporary  rec- 
ords. 

Similarly  slender  is  our  knowledge  of  other  women 
whom  we  ought  in  all  probability  to  associate  with  the 
two  just  discussed  :  Lady  Rutland,  Lady  Wroth,  and 
the  Countess  of  Huntington,  women  who  felt  a  keen 

^  Ticicknam  Garden.  *  Gosse  2.  79 ;   1651. 


88  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

interest  in  poets  and  in  the  welfare  of  poetry.  As  it 
is,  the  death  of  Lady  Bedford  in  1627  must  be  taken 
as  marking  the  end  of  the  EHzabethan  system  of 
feminine  patronage. 

With  the  accession  of  Charles  I  and  the  supremacy 
of  French  social  ideals  in  the  person  of  Queen  Henrietta 
Maria,  a  change  comes  over  the  salon.  A  new  side  of 
it  is  developed,  and  an  older  side  is  forgotten.  What 
had  been  a  court  of  patronage  became  a  court  of  love. 
The  system  of  Platonic  love,  which  is  a  characteristic 
mark  of  salons  at  various  periods,  comes  to  the  fore. 
It  had  existed  in  the  earlier  salons,  as  Donne's  Petrar- 
chan devotion  to  the  Countess  of  Bedford  is  sufficient 
to  show  ;  but  the  new  order  of  things  made  it  the  centre 
of  all.  This  shift  of  emphasis  was  a  loss  to  the  salon, 
for  literature  —  or  rather  poetry  —  became  a  tool  in 
the  process  of  courtship  rather  than  an  end  in  itself ; 
and  the  mistress  accepted  poetical  conceits  and  ex- 
travagant lyrics  as  evidence  of  worship  from  her 
'servants'  in  love.  Thus  the  whole  system  of  courtly 
love  was  introduced  hot  from  France,  and  ihe  subtle- 
ties and  silliness  of  the  precieuses  galantes  were  seen  in 
England.^  The  type  of  the  new  salon  mistress  is  the 
Countess  Carlisle,  a  Percy  by  birth,  the  favourite  of 
Henrietta   Maria,    and    the    idol    of    the    court.     She 

^  This  subject  is  pleasantly  discussed  by  Professor' Fletcher  in  his  Religion 
of  Beauty  in  Woman, '  Precieuses  at  the  Court  of  Charles  I,'  but  his  discussion 
shows  how  inimical  was  the  new  movement  to  anything  like  a  true  patronage 
of  letters. 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  89 

received  poetical  tributes  of  the  conventional  kind 
from  half  the  poets  of  the  era,  and  the  story  of  her 
gallantries  —  to  give  them  no  harsher  name  —  is  a 
part  of  the  history  of  England. 

Intrigue  is  the  natural  result  of  gallantry  such  as 
this,  and  intrigue  lasted  long  after  the  original  Platonic 
impetus  was  spent.  Intrigue  naturally  tends  away 
from  social  life :  Platonic  emotions  make  excellent 
subjects  for  discussion,  but  intrigue  is  impatient  of 
talk.  Any  one  who  will  compare  Cartwright's  Pane- 
gyric to  the  Countess  of  Carlisle  with  Suckling's  Lady 
Carlisle  Walking  in  Hampton  Court  Garden  may  see  how 
readily  Platonic  ecstasies  sank  into  the  filth  of  the  mire. 
The  two  poems  measure  the  extremes  of  courtly  verse, 
and  define  its  nature.  It  ranges,  as  Mr.  Fletcher  has 
said,  'all  the  way  from  exalted  mysticism  through 
mere  gallantry,  to  mocking  cynicism.'  Although  these 
moods  all  flourished  in  the  foreign  salons  of  various 
periods,  they  never  became  in  England  the  peculiar 
attributes  of  salon  life  as  distinct  from  mere  social 
customs.  They  passed  on  to  the  salons  of  the  Restora- 
tion little  more  than  a  general  tradition  of  Platonic 
and  pastoral  mannerism  and  a  handful  of  classical 
pseudonyms    useful    to    the    conventionally    amorous. 

When  with  the  Restoration  the  feminine  influence 
on  the  current  of  literature  emerges  once  more,  it  is 
again  changed  in  aspect  —  like  everything  else.  So 
far  as  the  destinies  of  the  English  salon  are  concerned. 


90  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

the  Restoration  marks  no  real  advance.  If  there  is 
not  an  actual  loss  of  ground,  there  is  at  least  a  change 
of  direction.  Women  now  become  aspirants  to  an 
independent  literary  reputation.  The  groups  which 
literary  women  formed  about  themselves  never  quite 
suggest  the  atmosphere  of  the  salon,  for  their  aims 
seldom  give  evidence  of  a  desire  to  approach  literature 
from  the  social  side.^  It  was  no  longer  the  ambition 
of  woman  to  rule  the  world  of  letters  from  above  or 
from  beyond  as  a  sort  of  Muse  by  whose  aid  and  in 
whose  honour  all  was  to  be  done,  but  to  enter  that 
world  herself  and  there  to  claim  equality  with  man. 
It  was  again  only  a  shift  of  emphasis,  but  it  was  suffi- 
cient to  destroy  the  social  aspect  of  the  salon.  A 
salon  is  not  a  school  of  professionals. 

It  seems  strange  that  the  Parisian  salon  should  not 
have  been  imported  bodily  by  the  returning  courtiers. 
A  French  salon  was  for  a  time  conducted  at  court,  as 
we  shall  see ;  but  it  was  not  brought  there  through 
English  influence,  and  always  remained  a  foreign 
growth,  not  even  adopting  the  English  language. 
English  literary  women,  despite  the  presence  of  this 
model,  seem  to  have  been  incapable  of  creating  any- 
thing more  than  a  circle  of  friends,  cordially  interested 
in  their  literary  ambitions,  but  hardly  considering 
the  coterie  the  highest  social  expression  of  the  literary 
life. 

'  Thus  there  is  no  suggestion  of  the  salon  about  such  a  figure  as  the  Duchess 
of  Newcastle. 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  91 

The  nearest  approach  to  salon  hfe  in  this  period 
is  the  coterie  formed  by  the  'matchless  Orinda,' 
Mrs.  Katherine  Philips.  This  amiable  young  woman, 
with  a  gift  for  versifying  and  a  truly  social  instinct, 
achieved  no  slight  reputation  in  her  own  day.  At 
Cardigan  Priory,  her  Welsh  estate,  she  conducted 
something  very  like  a  salon.  'She  instituted,'  says 
Mr.  Gosse,^  'a  Society  of  Friendship  to  which  male  and 
female  members  were  admitted,  and  in  which  poetry, 
religion  and  the  human  heart  were  to  form  the  subjects 
of  discussion.'  Here  is  the  salon  spirit  and  a  reliance 
on  conversation  as  the  truest  inspiration  to  social  life 
—  a  thing  which  we  shall  not  encounter  again  till  the 
days  of  the  bluestockings.  Orinda  adopted  the  prev- 
alent custom  of  giving  literary  names  to  her  friends, 
indulged  in  Platonic  friendships  of  the  most  florid 
kind,  praised  her  female  friends  in  verse,  and  de- 
spatched glowing  sentiments  to  them  in  letters : 

1  gasp  for  you  with  an  impatience  that  is  not  to  be 
imagined  by  any  soul  wound  up  to  a  less  concern  in 
friendship  than  yours  is,  and  therefore  I  cannot  hope 
to  make  others  sensible  of  my  vast  desires  to  enjoy 
you.2 

Whatever  interest  Mrs.  Philips's  works  may  possess 
must  be  shared  with  this  group,  with  'Rosania,' 
'Lucasia,'  '  Poliarchus,'  and  the  rest,  for  to  them  a  large 

^  Seventeenth  Century  Studies,  p.  208. 

2  To  'Berenice,'  in  Familiar  Letters,  London  1697;  1.  147;  30  December 
1668. 


92  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

proportion  of  her  writing  was  directly  addressed.  It 
is  to  be  regretted  that  we  are  not  more  fully  informed 
regarding  the  relations  of  certain  eminent  men  with 
the  coterie.  The  general  interest  felt  by  the  Royalist 
poets  in  her  career  has  been  taken  to  point  to  a  per- 
sonal connection  with  her,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether 
the  relations  of  such  men  as  Dryden,  Cowley,  and 
Denham  with  her  were  anything  more  than  formally 
courteous.  To  them  she  was  a  new  phenomenon  in 
the  literary  world,  a  female  author,  a  prodigy  that 
attracted  attention  but  did  not  threaten  rivalry  —  a 
woman  and  therefore  to  be  flattered,  a  poetess  and 
therefore  to  be  called  a  tenth  Muse.  Cowley,  who 
equates  her  with  Pope  Joan,  is  almost  comic  in  his 
praise : 

But  if  Apollo  should  design 
A  woman  laureat  to  make. 
Without  dispute  he  would  Orinda  take. 
Though  Sappho  and  the  famous  Nine 
Stood  by  and  did  repine.^ 

But  this  is  elegy,  nor  burlesque. 

With  Jeremy  Taylor,  'Palsemon,'  the  case  is  differ- 

1  On  the  Death  of  Mrs.  Katherine  Philips.  In  his  Ode  on  Orinda  s  Poems 
the  lady's  descent  is  traced  from  Boadicea.  Rowe,  in  his  Epistle  to  Daphnis, 
declares  that  she  soared  as  high  as  Corneille  'and  equalled  all  his  fame.' 
Dryden  compares  her  with  Mrs.  Killigrew.  Cowley  may  perhaps  have  owed 
more  than  the  rest  to  her.  The  following  reference  to  him  in  her  letters 
seems  to  show  that  she  had  been  of  real  service  to  him :  *  I  am  very  glad  of 
Mr.  Cowley's  success,  and  will  concern  myself  so  much  as  to  thank  your 
ladyship  for  your  endeavour  in  it.'  (To  Berenice,  Familiar  Letters  1.  143; 
25  June  [1758?].) 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  93 

ent.  In  1657  he  put  forth  a  duodecimo  volume  en- 
titled A  Discourse  of  the  Nature,  Offices  and  Measures  of 
Friendshijp,  which,  the  title-page  announces,  was 
'written  in  answer  to  a  Letter  from  the  most  ingenious 
and  vertuous  M.  K.  P.'  Orinda  had  written  to  Taylor, 
with  whom  she  must  have  been  already  on  terms  of 
intimacy,  to  inquire  'how  far  a  dear  and  perfect  friend- 
ship is  authorized  by  the  principles  of  Christianity.' 
The  answer  is  a  wholly  delightful  essay  which  was 
widely  popular  in  the  seventeenth  century  and  de- 
serves to  be  more  generally  known  to-day.  Taylor 
praises  Mrs.  Philips  as  'not  only  greatly  instructed  by 
the  direct  notices  of  things,  but  also  by  great  experi- 
ence in  the  matter  of  which  you  now  inquire.'  He  con- 
cludes that  it  is  not  ill  that  she  should  '  entertain  brave 
friendships  and  worthy  societies ' ;  but  takes  occasion  to 
warn  her  against  the  fantastic  Platonism  of  the  salon  :  ^ 

They  that  build  castles  in  the  aire,  and  look  upon 
friendship,  as  upon  a  fine  Romance,  a  thing  that  pleases 
the  fancy,  but  is  good  for  nothing  else  ^'ill  doe  well 
when  they  are  asleep,  or  when  they  come  to  Elysium ; 
and  for  ought  I  know  in  the  mean  time  may  be  as 
much  in  love  with  Mandana  in  the  Grand  Cyrus,  as 
with  the  Countess  of  Exeter;  and  by  dreaming  of  per- 
fect and  abstracted  friendships,  make  them  so  im- 
material that  they  perish  in  the  handling  and  become 
good  for  nothing. 

In  the  postscript  to  Mrs.  Philips,  she  is  requested  to 
forward   the   essay  to   Dr.  Wedderburn,  if  she  'shall 

1  Discourse,  p.  38. 


94  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

think  it  fit  that  these  pass  further'  than  her  own  'eye 
and  closet.'  Such  was  Taylor's  trust  in  Orinda ;  such 
his  tribute  to  her. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  Orinda's  relations  with 
the  authors  of  her  time  are  little  short  of  remarkable. 
Her  name  is  written  across  some  of  the  most  charac- 
teristic poetry  of  the  age.  When  she  was  but  twenty, 
commendatory  verses  by  her  were  prefixed  to  the  Poems 
of  Vaughan  the  Silurist.  Before  the  end  of  her  short 
life  —  she  died  in  1664,  soon  after  her  thirty -fourth 
birthday — she  had  even  attracted  the  notice  of  Dry  den. 
Her  contemporaries  appear  to  have  been  serious  in 
their  belief  that  she  had  made  herself  a  permanent 
place  in  English  literature,  and  for  many  years  after 
her  death  kept  her  fame  alive  by  publishing  her  plays, 
poems,  and  letters,  in  which  she  was  invariably  de- 
scribed as  'celebrated,'  'matchless,'  and  'incomparable.' 
Her  coterie  made  but  little  impression  on  the  literature 
of  its  time;  but  that  may  well  have  been  due  to  its 
short  career.  Mrs.  Philips  possessed  a  refinement  of 
taste  and  of  character  by  no  means  common  among 
the  literary  ladies  of  the  time,  and  a  noble  though 
highly  sentimental  affection  for  her  friends.  These  are 
characteristics  which,  had  she  lived,  she  might  have 
made  of  practical  advantage  to  the  world  of  letters. 

On  a  somewhat  lower  social  plane  the  notorious  Mrs^ 
Aphra  Behn  carried  on  the  traditions  of  the  matchless 
Orinda.     Like  her,  Mrs.  Behn  had  her  coterie  which 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  95 

she  celebrated  in  conventional  lyrics.  In  the  poem 
entitled  Our  Cabal,  the  various  members  are  described 
under  pastoral  pseudonyms,  Alexis,  Damon,  Amoret, 
and  the  like.  It  is  impossible  to  identify  the  persons 
referred  to,  but  it  is  unlikely  that  any  of  them  attained 
to  literary  fame.  Gallantry,  coquetry,  and  the  whole 
paraphernalia  of  the  amatory  art  formed  the  exclusive 
business  of  the  coterie.  With  the  world  of  letters  it 
had  little  to  do.  Thus  it  touches  the  salon  upon  its 
least  important  side.  But  Mrs.  Behn,  or  'Astrsea,' 
as  her  friends  rashly  called  her,  developed  another 
side  by  emulating  the  practice  of  Mile.  Scudery,  and 
weaving  certain  of  her  own  adventures  —  for  she  had 
had  many  —  into  the  body  of  her  novels.  This  prac- 
tice of  colouring  the  events  of  an  interminable  romance 
with  personal  allusions  and  allegorical  meanings  was 
one  of  the  principal  results  of  salon  activity  in  Paris 
during  the  later  seventeenth  century ;  but  it  is  not 
characteristic  of  the  salon  at  its  finest  and  was,  so  far 
as  English  literature  was  concerned,  but  a  fad  which 
had  no  future  at  all.  Moreover  Mrs.  Behn's  romances 
lack  what  is  best  in  the  type,  that  courtliness  which 
can  alone  redeem  such  works  from  artificiality  and 
dulness.  It  is  true  that  Mrs.  Behn  escapes  dulness, 
but  she  does  not  achieve  courtliness.  Thus  she  misses 
the  very  point  at  which  such  work  may  come  under  the 
influence  of  fine  society.  As  it  is,  far  from  serving  the 
cause  of  literature  by  attracting  authors  to  the  urbani- 
ties of  life,  her  scandalous  novels  brought  both  their 


96  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

author  and  her  profession  into  disrepute.  Her  unique 
achievement  was  to  show  that  a  woman  could  make 
her  Hving  by  her  pen.  Her  career  brought  her  in- 
evitably into  touch  and  even  into  competition  with 
male  authors,  and  her  easy  manners  enabled  her  to 
associate  on  terms  of  pleasant  familiarity  with  Dryden 
and  Otway ;  but  all  this  is  suggestive  rather  of  the 
camaraderie  of  the  modern  literary  world  than  of  the 
atmosphere  of  salons. 

Meanwhile  Hortense,  Duchess  of  Mazarin,  and  niece 
of  the  Cardinal  of  that  name,  had  set  up  in  Lon- 
don a  genuine  French  salon.  It  owes  its  somewhat 
exotic  fame  entirely  to  the  Chevalier  de  Saint  Evre- 
mond  who  wrote  of  its  mistress  in  language  of  the  most 
riotous  hyperbole.  Some  of  the  best-known  pages 
of  this  amorous  old  wit  were  produced  in  honour  of  the 
fair  French  refugee  at  the  court  of  Charles  II.  He 
wrote  poems  to  her ;  he  wrote  a  '  portrait '  of  her,  in 
which  her  charms  are  analysed  in  such  detail  as  almost 
to  indicate  a  state  of  dotage  in  him ;  to  satisfy  a  whim 
of  hers  he  wrote  a  Funeral  Oration  for  her  while  she 
was  yet  alive  that  she  might  see  her  praises  set  forth 
in  the  manner  of  Bossuet.  He  wrote  a  discourse  on 
religion  to  embody  the  thoughts  which  she  had  drawn 
out  during  a  conversation  in  her  salon.  In  a  letter 
to  her,  which  accompanied  the  essay,  he  asserts  that 
she  has  given  the  lie  to  the  old  statement  that  truth 
must   be    banished    from    ordinary    conversation,    for 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  97 

she  can  make  truth  so  attractive  as  to  reconcile  all 
minds  to  it  and  restore  it  to  its  proper  place  in  the 
world. ^  But  all  this  is  a  mere  speck  in  the  avalanche 
of  flattery.  Her  conversation,  he  assures  her  else- 
where,^  surpasses  Plutarch  in  gravity,  Seneca  in  senten- 
tiousness,  and  Montaigne  in  depth. 

But  the  philosophic  goddess  and  her  withered 
prophet  were  not  always  happy  together.  The  Duchess 
was  overfond  of  bassette,  a  game  in  which  Saint 
Evremond  indulged  chiefly  to  please  her,  lamenting 
the  loss  of  her  conversation  the  while,  and  addressing 
poetical  protests  to  her.  The  passion  for  gaming, 
which  threatened  to  become  a  profession  or  a  fury 
with  her,  is  less  revolting  than  the  amours  in  which 
the  lady  (more  beautiful  than  Helen  or  Cleopatra  ^) 
involved  herself.  The  fascination  of  the  Merry  Mon- 
arch and  the  death  of  a  favourite  lover  after  a  duel 
fought  with  an  infatuated  nephew,  bring  her  love- 
affairs  out  of  the  Platonic  atmosphere,  so  essential  to 
salons,  into  the  realm  of  ugly  realism. 

The  salon  Mazarin,  which  came  to  an  end  with  the 
death  of  the  Duchess  in  1699,  thus  tended  to  associate 
the  literary  hostess  with  vice  as  well  as  with  letters. 
As  Mrs.  Behn  had  degraded  the  name  of  woman  in 
the  world  of  hack-writers,  so  the  Duchess  of  Mazarin 

^  Works  of  Saint  Evremond,  English  translation,  2d  edition,  London 
1728 ;  2.  247. 

2  lb.  2.  299. 

'  Her  beauty  was  celebrated  by  Waller  in  The  Triple  Combat.  Lely 
painted  her  portrait. 


98  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

degraded  it  in  the  drawing-room.  Her  salon  repre- 
sented a  vicious  and  a  foreign  institution,  which, 
though  it  gained  a  foothold  at  Court,  was  quite  with- 
out influence  upon  English  life  and  literature. 

With  the  death  of  the  Duchess  of  Mazarin  we  reach 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  the  end  of  any- 
thing like  a  salon  in  England  until  the  time  of  the 
bluestockings.  The  results  of  the  feminist  movement 
at  the  close  of  that  century  ^  are  seen  in  two  distinct 
yet  definitely  related  facts.  In  the  first  place,  a  large 
number  of  women  were  encouraged,  by  the  success  of 
Mrs.  Behn,  to  attempt  the  production  of  literature, 
and  the  female  author  and  wit  became  a  current  sub- 
ject of  satire.  With  all  this  we  have  here  nothing  to 
do.  Women  like  Catherine  Trotter,  Mary  Pix,  and 
Mrs.  Manley,  far  from  promoting  the  social  recogni- 
tion of  literature,  tended  to  deflect  the  influence  of 
woman  from  the  drawing-room  to  the  noise  and  strife 
of  Grub  Street.  The  satire  that  was  poured  out  on 
them  and  their  kind  as  learned  women  must  not  be 
taken  to  point  to  the  existence  of  anything  like  a  salon, 
strictly    considered.     Terms    borrowed    from    French 

'  See  Dr.  Upham's  'English  Femmes  Savantes  at  the  End  of  the  Seven- 
teenth Century,'  in  the  Journal  of  English  and  Germanic  Philology,  April 
1913.  This  is  a  fairly  exhaustive  treatment  of  the  subject,  and  reveals  a 
development  of  'feminism'  in  England  parallel  in  some  respects  with  that 
in  France.  As  the  movement,  however,  reveals  no  attempt  to  centre  literary 
activity  in  salons,  the  article  must  be  regarded  as  treating  a  different  aspect 
of  the  general  subject  from  the  one  here  dealt  with. 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  99 

literature  were  freely  flung  about ;  but  references  to 
ruelles  and  femmes  savantes  were  so  loosely  used  that  they 
are  not  to  be  thought  of  having  the  same  significance 
when  repeated  by  English  authors  that  they  have  in 
their  own  country. 

In  the  second  place,  and  largely  as  a  result  of  the 
opinion  in  which  such  female  wits  were  held,  we  find 
a  mass  of  tracts,  consisting  of  Defences  of.  Apologies 
for,  and  Serious  Proposals  to  Women,  all  working 
towards  a  vindication  of  the  sex.  Such  vindications 
frequently  strike  the  reader  as  having  been  written 
to  prove  the  very  charges  which  they  exist  to  rebut. 
In  any  case,  this  flood  of  feeble  defences  seems  to  show 
that  woman  had  forgotten  her  high  office  as  inspirer 
and  patron  of  letters,  which  she  had  hitherto  always 
taken  for  granted,  and  had  decided  to  occupy  herself 
with  vague  questions  of  equality  and  natural  capacity. 
We  have  moved  far  from  the  spacious  times  of  the 
Countess  of  Pembroke. 

In  the  age  of  Anne,  English  women  lost  what  was 
probably  the  best  chance  they  ever  had  to  reestablish 
the  feminine  patronage  of  letters  which  distinguished 
the  age  of  Elizabeth.  The  tone  of  urbanity  which 
characterized  the  literature  of  the  early  eighteenth 
century  ought  to  have  given  birth  to  salons.  The 
presence  of  a  Stuart  queen  upon  the  throne  and  the 
supremacy  of  a  school  of  authors  by  no  means  averse 
from  social  pleasures,  offered  a  unique  opportunity  to 
women  to  give  social  expression  to  their  interest  in 


100  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

literature  and  to  inspire  and  assist  authors.  But  the 
opportunity  was  lost.  Feminine  activity  in  the  liter- 
ary world  continued  to  be  associated  with  notorious 
names,  with  the  scurrilous  New  Atlantis  of  Mary  Manley, 
and  with  the  loose  career  of  Mrs.  Centlivre.  Women 
authors  were  already  Bohemians.  'In  the  female 
world,'  says  Johnson  in  his  Life  of  Addison,  'any 
acquaintance  with  books  was  distinguished  only  to  be 
censured.' 

This  pronouncement  of  Johnson's  is  of  that  large 
general  nature  which  is  likely  to  give  offence  to  special- 
ists. A  multitude  of  exceptions  to  it  will  occur  at 
once  to  any  one.  The  Duchess  of  Queensbury,  for 
example,  patronized  Gay ;  Dean  Swift  was  not  un- 
influenced by  the  women  who  surrounded  him ;  Pope 
addressed  verse-epistles  to  Martha  Blount ;  later  in  the 
century.  Young  satirized  the  literary  female,  and 
Richardson  had  his  group  of  adoring  'Daughters.' 
But  none  of  these  really  changes  the  significance  of 
Johnson's  summary.  When  he  referred  to  the  censure 
visited  upon  literary  women  he  may  well  have  been 
thinking  of  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  whose 
acquaintance  with  the  authors  of  her  time  was  wider 
than  that  ever  possessed  by  the  bluestockings.  But 
though  the  noble  lady  had  genuine  interest  in  letters 
and  very  remarkable  powers,  she  was  wholly  without 
that  courtly  character  which  is  indispensable  to  the 
hostess  of  a  salon.  She  repelled  men  as  much  by  her 
insolent  cleverness  as  by  her  slovenly  manners.     Fi- 


THE  EARLIER  ENGLISH  SALON  101 

nally  her  long  residence  abroad  withdrew  her  completely 
from  the  literary  circle  which  she  knew  so  well. 

It  was  the  work  of  the  middle  decades  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  to  remove  the  odium  in  which  women's 
interest  in  literature  had  been  held.  The  world  of 
female  readers  became  almost  as  large  and  influential 
as  that  of  the  male,  so  that  by  1778  Johnson  could 
remark,  'All  our  ladies  read  now.'  The  Bluestocking 
Club,  which  marks  the  first  definite  reappearance  of 
the  salon  in  London,  shows  the  desire  of  woman  to 
extend  her  function  in  the  literary  world  so  as  to 
include  in  it  the  office  of  patron,  as  well  as  that  of 
author  and  reader.  But  this  new  patronage  was  to  be 
primarily  social,  and  was  to  express  itself  first  in  various 
social  diversions,  which  preluded  the  more  formal 
salons,  and  to  which  we  now  proceed. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Conversation   Parties   and   Literary  Assemblies 

Not  the  least  pleasant  of  the  social  gatherings  for 
conversation  was  the  levee,  or  reception  held  on  rising 
from  bed.  The  custom  was  of  course  adopted  by 
people  of  fashion  in  imitation  of  the  popular  court 
function,  and  it  always  retained  something  of  the 
courtly  atmosphere,  its  popularity  in  fine  society  being 
due  to  the  sense  of  importance  which  it  lent  to  the 
host  or  hostess.  Madame  de  Tencin,  for  example, 
thus  held  court  from  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
queening  it  over  everybody,  'from  the  lowest  tools  to 
the  highest.'  ^  Mascarille,  it  will  be  remembered, 
boasts  that  he  never  rises  from  bed  without  the  com- 
pany of  half  a  dozen  beaux  esprits.  Yet  despite  its 
imitation  of  the  court,  there  must  have  been  about 
this  kind  of  reception  a  certain  intimacy  and  ease  that 
were  lacking  in  the  more  formal  assemblies  held  later 
in  the  day.^ 

In  England  the  levee  had  been  known  for  perhaps 

'  So  Madame  du  Deffand  told  Walpole.     Walpole's  Letters  10.  28. 

^  Guests  were  not  necessarily  received  in  the  sleeping-room.  The  ad- 
joining dressing-room  was  often  utilized  for  the  purpose.  See  Colman's 
Man  of  Busi?iess  (1774),  opening  of  Act  2.  The  levee  should  be  compared 
with  Mme.  de  Rambouillet's  more  intimate  receptions,  where  a  seat  near 

102 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  103 

a  hundred  years ;  ^  but  it  first  becomes  of  importance 
to  the  student  of  Hterature  about  the  middle  of  the 
century.  A  good  general  impression  of  it  may  be 
obtained  from  the  fourth  plate  of  Hogarth's  Marriage 
a  la  Mode,  published  in  1745.  The  hostess,  half 
dressed,  is  seated  at  her  toilet-table,  under  the  minis- 
trations of  her  hair-dresser,  and  is  engaged  in  con- 
versation with  her  lover,  who  is  reclining  on  a  sofa 
near  by.  In  the  background  is  seen  the  bed,  one  cur- 
tain of  which  is  still  drawn.  A  negro  butler  is  passing 
chocolate  to  the  guests  who  are  ranged  in  front  of  the 
bed,  while  an  Italian  tenor  is  regaling  them  with  solos 
to  the  accompaniment  of  a  flute.  This  latter  point  is 
significant  in  the  satire,  for  it  is  evident  that  the 
hostess  is  incapable  of  conducting  a  true  conversazione, 
and  has  therefore  had  recourse  to  providing  her  guests 
with  other  entertainment,  while  she  pursues  her 
amorous  intrigue. 

A  later  and  even  more  familiar  representation  of  the 
levee  is  found  at  the  opening  of  the  School  for  Scandal, 
where  Lady  Sneerwell  is  'discovered'  at  her  toilet. 
When  this  scene  is  correctly  represented  on  the  stage 

the  bedside,  in  the  ruelle  or  lane  between  bed  and  wall,  was  the  place  of 
honour,  as  being  nearest  to  the  hostess  while  she  reclined  in  state. 

Morning  informality  became  so  popular  in  Paris  that  ladies  and  gentle- 
men of  quality  appeared  at  lectures,  'meme  en  robe  de  chambre'  (Roberts' 
Memoirs  of  Hannah  More  2.  17).  Cf.  Goldsmith  (Citizen  of  the  World, 
Letter  77),  'the  modem  manner  of  some  of  our  nobility  receiving  company 
in  their  morning  gowns.' 

^  As  early  as  the  days  of  the  Spectator,  Addison  deplored  the  custom, 
introduced  by  travelled  ladies,  of  '  receiving  gentlemen  in  their  bed-rooms.' 


104  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

the  lady's  guests  are  shown  as  drinking  chocolate  at  her 
levee,  and  there  characteristically  displaying  their 
conversational  gifts. 

That  the  levee  was  at  its  best  essentially  a  literary 
function  is  shown  by  the  encouragement  it  received 
from  Samuel  Johnson.  The  account  of  his  morning 
receptions  is  preserved  for  us  by  Dr.  Maxwell,  whose 
description  must  be  quoted  in  full : 

About  twelve  o'clock  I  commonly  visited  him,  and 
frequently  found  him  in  bed,  or  declaiming  over  his 
tea,  which  he  drank  very  plentifully.  He  generally 
had  a  levee  of  morning  visitors,  chiefly  men  of  letters ; 
Hawkesworth,  Goldsmith,  Murphy,  Langton,  Steevens, 
Beauclerk,  etc.,  etc.,  and  sometimes  learned  ladies, 
particularly  I  remember  a  French  lady  of  wit  and  fash- 
ion doing  him  the  honour  of  a  visit. ^  He  seemed  to 
be  considered  as  a  kind  of  public  oracle,  whom  every- 
body thought  they  had  a  right  to  visit  and  consult; 
and  doubtless  they  were  well  rewarded.^ 

When  Johnson  visited  Boswell  in  Edinburgh  after 
the  tour  of  the  Hebrides  'he  had,  from  ten  o'clock  to 
one  or  two,  a  constant  levee  of  various  persons,  of 
different  characters  and  descriptions ; '  so  that  poor 
Mrs.  Boswell  was  obliged  to  '  devote  the  greater  part  of 
the  morning  to  the  endless  task  of  pouring  out  tea.'  ^ 

This  custom,  thus  sanctioned  by  fashion  and  by 
literary  authority,  was  adopted  by  all  who  pretended 

*  Probably,  as  Hill  notes,  Mme.  de  Boufflers ;   cf .  above,  p.  53. 

2  Boswell's  Life  2.  118;   cf.  3.  207. 

3  Boswell's  Life  5.  395 ;  here  the  word  levee  is  probably  loosely  employed 
for  a  morning  conversazione. 


CONVERSATION   PARTIES  105 

to  wit.  In  1760,  Goldsmith  sneers  at  the  philosophical 
beau  who  'receives  company  in  his  study,  in  all  the 
pensive  formality  of  slippers,  night-gown,  and  easy- 
chair.'  1  Flavia,  in  the  same  author's  Double  Trans- 
formation, after  marrying  an  Oxford  Fellow,  aspires 
to  the  reputation  of  a  femme  savante : 

Proud  to  be  seen  she  kept  a  bevy 
Of  powdered  coxcombs  at  her  levee. 

By  1779  the  function  had  become  so  popular  that  its 
name  was  frequently  extended  to  any  formal  enter- 
tainment where  conversation  was  the  principal  at- 
traction, even  when  it  was  held  in  the  evening." 

The  levee  merged  easily  into  the  formal  breakfast. 
This  function  might  occur  at  any  hour  from  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning  to  three  in  the  afternoon.^  It 
was  in  1750  that  Madame  du  Bocage  recorded  her 
impressions  of  Mrs.  Montagu's  breakfasts,  generalizing 
upon  the  custom  of  the  nation  in  these  words : 

In  the  morning  breakfasts  which  enchant  as  much 
by  the  exquisite  viands  as  by  the  richness  of  the  plate 
in  which  they  are  served  up,  agreeably  bring  together 
both  the  people  of  the  country  and  strangers  [i.e.,  both 
natives  and  foreigners].* 

The  diaries  and  letters  of  Beattie,  Mrs.  Delany,  Miss 
Burney,  and  Miss  More  are  strewn  with  references  to 

1  Citizen  of  the  World,  Letter  104. 

*  Cf .  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson  2.  318. 
'  Diary  of  Mme.  D'Arblay  5.  80-81. 

*  Letters  (1770)  1.  7;  8  April  1750. 


106  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

this  fashionable  meal.  In  the  spring  of  1774,  Walpole 
professes  himself  frightened  at  the  inundation  of  them 
coming  on.^  A  favourite  diversion  at  these  matutinal 
parties,  as  at  entertainments  later  in  the  day,  was  the 
declamation  of  Thomas  Sheridan  (who  would  repeat 
Gray's  Elegy,  Dryden's  Ode,  and  'everything  that 
everybody  could  say  by  heart'  ^),  the  French  readings 
of  Tessier,  the  tragic  recitations  of  Tighe  (who  expected 
his  auditors  to  swoon  from  emotion),  and,  occasion- 
ally, bits  of  recitation  or  acting  by  Garrick.  Sheridan 
gave  so  many  of  these  literary  breakfasts  that  Mrs. 
Boscawen  suspected  that  he  received  money  for  them.^ 
At  times  such  functions  were  more  or  less  public,  and 
were  held  in  the  Haymarket,  at  Vauxhall,  or  at  Bath, 
in  the  Assembly  Rooms. 

The  receptions  of  the  later  afternoon  and  evening 
are  of  a  less  definite  character.  Beattie  describes  a 
gathering  at  Mrs.  Montagu's  as  'an  assembly  or  con- 
versation or  rout.'  ^  The  entertainment  was  of  wide 
scope,  as  in  Italian  and  French  drawing-rooms,  and 
might  include  dancing,  card-playing,  and  literary 
readings,  as  well  as  conversation.^     In  this  work  we 

1  Letters  8.  437. 

^  Roberts'  Memoirs  of  More  1.  395. 

'  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  6.  229 ;   7  September  1784. 

*  Diary  for  10  May  1773 ;   M.  Forbes'  Life  of  Beattie,  p.  75. 

^  Hannah  More's  piquant  description  of  an  assembly  is  worth  quoting 
in  full : 

'On  Monday  I  was  at  a  very  great  assembly  at  the  Bishop  of  Saint 
Asaph's.  Conceive  to  yourself  one  hundred  and  fifty  or  two  hundred  people 
met  together,  dressed  in  the  extremity  of  the  fashion;    painted  as  red  as 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  107 

are  concerned  only  with  the  Hterary  aspect  of  these 
parties ;  the  origin  and  the  more  serious  results  of  the 
London  salon  are  discussed  elsewhere,  so  that  the  rest 
of  this  chapter  may  be  devoted  to  a  consideration  of 
the  means  adopted  for  shining  in  conversation  at  these 
parties,  and  the  attempt  to  connect  such  assemblies 
directly  with  the  production  of  poetry. 

It  is  surely  a  misfortune  that  contemporary  descrip- 
tions of  the  conversazione  should  be  generally  satirical 
in  tone ;  but  it  is  natural  enough,  for  conversation, 
unsupported  by  other  entertainment,  tends,  in  large 
groups,  to  pedantry  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  frivolous- 
ness  on  the  other.  English  literature  produced  no 
Moliere  to  satirize  the  salons ;  but  the  conversazione 
did  give  both  character  and  title  to  one  great  comedy, 
the  School  for  Scandal.  Although  this  play  is  not, 
like  the  Critique  de  VEcole  des  Femmes,  an  adequate 
criticism  of  the  literary  drawing-room,  it  does  never- 
theless preserve  prominent  aspects  of  it,  and  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  refer  to  it  repeatedly  in  illustrating 
the  nature  of  the  conversazione.^     Another  criticism 

bacchanals;  poisoning  the  air  with  perfumes;  treading  on  each  other's 
gowns ;  making  the  crowd  they  blame ;  not  one  in  ten  able  to  get  a  chair ; 
protesting  they  are  engaged  to  ten  other  places ;  and  lamenting  the  fatigue 
they  are  not  obliged  to  endure ;  ten  or  a  dozen  card-tables,  crammed  with 
dowagers  of  quality,  grave  ecclesiastics,  and  yellow  admirals ;  and  you  have 
an  idea  of  an  assembly.'     Roberts'  Memoirs  of  More  1.  242;   cf.  ib.  1.  311. 

^  Other  contemporary  descriptions  of  the  salon  will  be  found  elsewhere  in  \^ 

this  volume.  Still  others  —  in  general  more  fragmentary  —  may  be  con- 
sulted in  Frances  Brooke's  Excursion  1.  142,  Roberts'  Memoirs  of  More  2. 
22-23;   1.  92-93;   174;   317. 


108  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

of  this  entertainment  is  found  in  a  book  now  totally 
forgotten,  entitled.  Modern  Manners,  or  the  Country 
Cousins,  in  a  series  of  Poetical  Epistles.  This  is  the 
work  of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Hoole,  son  of  the  translator 
of  Tasso  and  Ariosto,  and  appeared  in  the  year  1782. 
The  poems  describe  the  visit  of  a  north-English  family 
to  London,  somewhat  after  the  manner  of  Smollett  in 
Humphry  Clinker,  and  of  Anstey  in  the  New  Bath 
Guide.  The  tenth  epistle  is  an  account  of  Lady  Chat- 
tony 's  conversazione.^  At  that  assembly  old  Mr. 
Ralph  Rusty  is  served  with  lukewarm  coffee  and  tea 
and  a  minute  bit  of  cake,  which  made  him  long  for 
more.  The  company  splits  up  into  groups,  each  with 
their  backs  turned  on  the  rest.  The  first  party  which 
he  joins  is  (naturally)  talking  scandal : 

My  lovely  Miss  Wagtail,'  says  pretty  Beau  Brisker, 
I've  seen  your  dear  friend,  sweet  Miss  Fatty  Fanfrisker.' 

—  Dear  creature  !  —  she's  truly  what  all  men  adore  so '  — 

—  Faith  not  quite  so  charming  but  some  I  know  more  so  '  — 

—  You  difficult  thing  !  you're  as  rude  as  a  bear. 
You  think  nobody  handsome  I  vow  and  declare ! 
What  fault  can  you  find  ?  — ^  to  be  sure,  her  hair's  sandy. 
And  Scapegrace  declares  that  her  legs  are  quite  "bandy."' 

His  second  visit  is  to  a  group  engaged  in  musical  gossip  : 

'a  nymph  with  a  white  varnished  face 
And  a  sallow  thin  man,  almost  covered  with  lace.' 

^  Horace  Walpole's  experiences  in  the  English  salons  at  Turin  and  Florence 
may  be  consulted  in  the  first  volume  of  his  Letters.  '  Only  figure  the  coalition 
of  prudery,  debauchery,  sentiment,  history,  Greek,  Latin,  French,  Italian, 
and  metaphysics ;  all,  ex?ept  the  second,  understood  by  halves,  by  quarters, 
or  not  at  all.'     1.  8^;   31  July  1740. 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  109 

He  escapes  from  their  gushing  ecstasies  only  to  fall 
on  a  poHtical  discussion  : 

Next  a  party  of  critics  and  authors  I  joined. 

And  thought  I  had  found  out  a  set  to  my  mind : 

Cries  a  Uttle  black  man,  'I'm  convinced,  Dr.  Guzzle, 

'Tis  a  poor  paltry  book  that  was  mentioned  by  Puzzle. 

I'm  told  too  that  Ratsbane  and  Screachowl  abuse  it  ?  — 

Have  you,  my  dear  Doctor,  had  time  to  peruse  it  ? ' 

'O,  yes,  I  have  skimmed  it  —  'tis  terrible  trash, 

An  oleo  of  nonsense,  an  ill-savour'd  hash.'' 

'Sir,  good  Mr.  Shuttlecock's  pamphlet,  depend  on't, 

Which  now  is  just  published,  will  soon  make  an  end  on't'  — 

'I  heard,'  cries  another,  'at  Cadell's  to-day," 

That  Johnson's  in  town,  and  is  writing  away ; 

I  was  charmed  with  his  Milton ;   what  judgment  and  spirit ! 

Mr.  Rattlesnake,  sure  you'll  allow  this  has  merit .'' 

You've  read  it,  no  doubt.  Sir,'  —  'Not  I,  Sir,  indeed  — 

Read  Johnson  !  —  I'd  sooner  subscribe  to  the  creed  !  — 

His  opinions,  religious  and  civil,  I  hate  — 

Sir,  he'd  make  us  all  slaves  to  the  church  and  the  state !'  — 

'Gude  Sir,'  cries  a  Scot,  springing  up  from  behind. 

And  presenting  his  snuff-box,  'you're  quite  o'  my  mind; 

'Tho'  the  Doctor  would  fain  give  our  poets  the  law, 

O'  the  spirit  of  verse  he  knows  nothing  at  a' ; 

In  spite  of  his  critique,  I  canna'  perceive 

What  there  is  in  your  poem  of  Adam  and  Eve : 

An  Ossian  you  read,  Milton  canna'  ga  doun 

'Tis  lik  after  a  virgin  a  mess  o'  the  toun  : 

No,  troth,  here  the  Doctor  does  nothing  but  dream, 

For  he  is  too  purblind  to  ken  the  subleeme '  — 

'Hold,  hold,  my  good  friend  —  I  must  stand  by  old  Milton, 

While  the  sword  that  I  wear  has  a  blade  or  a  hilt  on ; 

That  great  politician,  that  torch  of  our  nation. 

Must  never  be  mentioned  without  veneration  : 

Respecting  the  Doctor,  you  say  very  true. 


110  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

I  think  him  as  scurvy  a  critic  as  you, 
But  consider  him  now  in  a  worse  point  of  view  : 
Pray  is  he  not  pensioned  ?  —  and  does  he  not  write,  Sir, 
To  make  us  tame  fools,  and  beUeve  black  is  white,  Sir  ? 
All  friends  to  our  freedom  that  creature  must  hate 
Who  pockets  three  hundred  a  year  from  the  state.' 
'Gad  troth,  maister  Rattlesnake,  why  do  j'ou  mantion. 
With  so  much  asperity.  Sir,  that  word  pansion  ? 
The  Doctor  deserves  na  sic  thing  —  but  what  then 
In  troth,  I  weel  know  many  axcellent  men, 
Who  never  have  thought  it  a  shame  or  disgrace 
T'  accept  a  wee  pansion  or  snug  pratty  place ; 
But  then  they  have  a'  sat  doun  selent  as  deeth  — 
The  Doctor  still  vents  his  pestiferous  breeth 
Against  a'  Scotch  tenets  and  Scotch  reputation, 
Tho'  he  found  a  gude  friend  in  a  Laird  of  our  nation.' 

'I  see,'  cries  another,  'your  anger  he  wakes, 
Because  he's  no  friends  to  the  country  of  cakes; 
Nor  am  I  surpriz'd,  for  the  place  of  our  birth 
We  all  of  us  think  is  the  best  upon  earth ; 
And  therefore  we  ne'er  can  the  writer  approve. 
Who  slights  the  dear  land  we  so  partially  love.' 

'You  speak  like  a  seer  —  ah  !  you  ken,  Sir,  his  Tour, 
Our  vary  worst  foe  could  have  written  no  more ; 
In  thot  he  insinuates,  tho'  he  canna'  see 
Twa  yards,  that  we've  na  sic  a  thing  as  a  tree, 
Tho'  just  by  the  road  there  were  saxteen  or  twanty, 
And,  if  he'd  gone  more  to  the  laft,  he'd  found  planty ; 
Nay,  troth,  it's  a  fact.  Sir,  that's  weel  understood, 
Au'  Scotland  was  antiently  covered  with  wood.' 

Mr.  Rusty's  unhappy  evening  was  concluded  by  listen- 
ing to  the  tales  of  a  young  lord  just  returned  from  his 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  111 

travels,  a  buck  who  wishes  to  fight  a  duel  with  him 
because  he  laughs  at  incredible  stories. 

There  is  nothing  very  witty  in  this  poem,  as  the 
quotations  may  show ;  and  the  satires  no  doubt  sank 
of  their  own  weight ;  but  in  spite  of  its  dulness,  the 
account  would  appear  to  be,  in  the  main,  a  fair  picture 
of  the  conversazione.  We  may  notice,  in  the  first 
place,  that  Lady  Chattony  has  followed  the  best  tradi- 
tions of  the  salon  in  reducing  her  refreshments  to  a 
minimum,  depending  for  the  success  of  her  reception 
entirely  upon  the  conversation  of  her  guests.^  The 
talk,  again,  is  not  confined  to  a  large  circle;  but  is 
broken  up,  after  Mrs.  Vesey's  manner,  into  a  series  of 
small  groups.  We  have  the  usual  references  to  gossip, 
scandal,  and  chatter  about  clothes,  politics,  and  the 
opera,  with  occasional  approaches  to  Sheridan's  method 
of  satire,  but  with  none  of  his  cleverness. 

It  is  inevitable  that  any  satire  on  the  conversazione 
should  dwell  on  the  tendency  to  scandal  and  gossip. 

'  This  was  an  important  matter  with  some  of  the  bluestockings,  as  the 
following  quotation  from  Hannah  More  may  show :  '  I  never  knew  a  great 
party  turn  out  so  pleasantly  as  the  other  night  at  the  Pepys's.  There  was 
all  the  pride  of  London  —  every  wit  and  every  wit-ess  .  .  .  but  the  spirit 
of  the  evening  was  kept  up  on  the  strength  of  a  little  lemonade  till  past 
eleven,  without  cards,  scandal,  or  politics.'  Roberts'  Memoirs  of  More  1.  208. 
Johnson's  opposition  to  anything  of  the  sort  is  shown  by  his  remark  on 
i'an  evening  society  for  conversation' :  'There  is  nothing  served  about  there, 
ji  neither  tea,  nor  coffee,  nor  lemonade,  nor  anything  whatever,  and  depend 
!upon  it,  Sir,  a  man  does  not  love  to  go  to  a  place  from  whence  he  comes  out 
exactly  as  he  went  in.'     Boswell's  Life  4.  90. 

He  urged  Mrs.  Thrale  to  provide  her  guests  with  'a  profusion  of  the  best 
sweetmeats.' 


112  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

So  inevitable  is  their  presence  in  the  salons  that  it 
seems  hardly  necessary  to  point  it  out ;  but  it  is  essen- 
tial to  be  at  the  true  explanation  of  their  prevalence, 
which  no  satire  is  likely  to  point  out.  Scandal,  and 
its  sister,  Gossip,  are  the  short  cuts  to  cleverness,  and 
cleverness  is  the  one  indispensable  thing  to  the  fre- 
quenters of  salons.  This  is  abundantly  evident  in  the 
School  for  Scandal.  It  is  wit  for  which  Lady  Sneer- 
well's  guests  are  striving,  and  they  will  mar  a  character 
that  they  may  make  a  mot.  'There  is  no  possibility,' 
says  Lady  Sneer  well,  'of  being  witty  without  a  little 
ill-nature ;  the  malice  of  a  good  thing  is  the  barb  that 
makes  it  stick,'  ^  and  Lady  Teazle  is  in  practical  agree- 
ment with  her;  'I  vow  I  bear  no  malice  against  the 
people  I  abuse;  when  I  say  an  ill-natured  thing  'tis 
out  of  pure  good  humour.' 

Sheridan  was  not  the  only  dramatist  to  satirize  the 
salons  and  their  scandalous  talk.  His  comedy  was 
imitated  by  Thomas  Holcroft  in  Seduction,^  a  play 
whose  popularity  on  the  stage  was  equalled  by  its  popu- 
larity in  print.  The  conversation  descriptive  of  an 
assembly  at  Lady  Morden's  is  in  obvious  imitation 
of  the  Scandal  School. 

^  How  true  this  is  to  the  spirit  of  conversation  is  shown  by  a  somewhat 
scandalous  discussion  of  Miss  Hannah  More  which  passed  between  Mrs. 
Cholmondeley  and  Miss  Burney :  Mrs.  Cholmondeley :  '  I  don't  like  her 
at  all ;  that  is,  I  detest  her !  She  does  nothing  but  flatter  and  fawn ;  and 
then  she  thinks  ill  of  nobody.  Don't  you  hate  a  person  who  thinks  ill  of 
nobody  ?'     Diary  of  Mme.  D'Arblay  1.  188. 

2  1787.     Act  3,  scene  2. 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES 


113 


Sir  Frederic. 

Lord  Morden. 
Mrs.  Modely. 
Sir  Frederic. 

Lady  Morden. 
Lord  Morden. 
Mrs.  Modely. 
Lady  Morden. 


Sir  Frederic. 

Lady  Morden. 
Lord  Morden. 


Lady  Morden. 


Sir  Nathan  Neaptide,  the  yellow  ad- 
miral, came. 

An  agreeable  guest ! 

Oh !  rude  as  his  own  boatswain. 

Would  teach  a  startling  blasphemy, 
rather  than  want  good  conversation. 

He  attempts  satire. 

But  utters  abuse. 

That  makes  him  so  much  respected. 

Yes ;  like  a  chimney-sweeper  in  a 
crowd,  he  makes  his  way  by  being 
dirty.  .   .  . 

The  widow  Twinkle,  as  usual,  talked  a 
vast  deal  about  reputation. 

One  is  apt  to  admire  a  thing  one  wants. 

She  always  takes  infinite  pains  to 
place  her  reputation,  like  broken 
china  in  a  buffet,  with  the  best  side 
outward. 

She  may  plaister,  and  cement,  but  will 
never  bring  it  to  bear  handling. 


Other  aspirants  to  conversational  fame  adopted  the 
less  questionable  habit  of  talking  sentiments.  Here 
again  the  School  for  Scandal  reveals  the  trick  of  the 
salons,  for  Joseph  Surface  has  won  himself  a  place  in 
the  group  by  virtue  of  his  philosophical  and  ethical 
maxims.  Sheridan's  brilliant  satire  of  a  reigning  fad 
in  literature  and  society  was  anticipated  by  Goldsmith 
in  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  in  which,  when  Kate  Hard- 
castle  wishes  to  speak  like  a  fine  lady,  she  at  once  be- 
gins to  talk  sentiments.^  This  habit  of  lending  a  sem- 
blance of  depth  to  one's  conversation  by  the  introduction 

1  See  her  first  conversation  with  Marlow,  Act  II.  She  herself  calls  it 
sentimental,  in  reference  to  these  platitudes. 


114  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

of  philosophical  aphorisms  is  no  doubt  as  old  as  the 
salon  itself-  At  its  best,  there  is  nothing  contemptible 
in  the  sentiment,  as  the  long  and  brilliant  history  of 
the  maxim  in  French  literature  may  prove.  The  rep- 
utation of  Mme.  de  Sable's  salon  was  largely  made 
by  the  maxim  or  pensee,  and  all  the  later  salons  afford 
examples  of  its  vitality.  Madame  Geoffrin  was  famous 
for  it.  'Madame  Geoffrin,'  wrote  Mme.  Necker, 
'a  mis  toute  sa  raison  en  maximes,'  ^  and  the  same 
writer  praises  the  work  of  English  authors  for  their 
successful  production  of  this  type,  finding  these  authors 
otherwise  deficient  in  moral  principles."  The  maxim, 
ethical  sentiment,  or  philosophical  truth  sententiously 
expressed,  did  indeed  attain  substantial  existence  in 
the  essays  of  Samuel  Johnson,  who  fancied  that  man- 
kind might  come  in  time  to  '  write  all  aphoristically ;  * 
but  in  English  conversation  it  never  found  a  thoroughly 
congenial  soil.  'Sentiments'  were  popular,  but,  like 
much  that  was  popular,  they  were  hollow  too.  The 
Dowager  Countess  Gower  writes  to  Mrs.  Delany  that 
the  bluestockings  are  at  Sunning  Wells,  where  they 
'sport  sentiments  from  morn  tell  noon,  from  noon  to 
dewy  eve.'  ^  The  pages  of  the  Wifs  Magazine  teemed 
with  collections  of  them  :  'Flattery,  like  a  cameleon, 
assumes  the  colours  of  the  object  it  is  nearest  to.' 
The  record  of  bluestocking  maxims  and  sentiments 
preserved  in  letters  and  diaries  is  amazing,  but  not 

1  Melanges  3.  243.  2  /j.  266. 

2  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  4.  236 ;  30  August  1769. 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  115 

because  of  its  brilliance.  Mrs.  Montagu  wrote  the 
following  to  Miss  Burney,  in  reference  to  the  character 
of  Mr.  Vesey,  'A  frippery  character,  like  a  gaudy  flower, 
may  please  while  it  is  in  bloom ;  but  it  is  the  virtuous 
only  that,  like  the  aromatics,  preserve  their  sweet  and 
reviving  odour  when  withered.'  ^  This  is  exactly  in  the 
style  of  Julia,  the  once-fashionable  heroine  of  The 
Rivals,  who,  in  respect  of  her  conversation,  might  be 
own  sister  to  Joseph  Surface :  '  When  hearts  deserving 
of  happiness  would  unite  their  fortunes.  Virtue  would 
crown  them  with  an  unfading  garland  of  modest  hurt- 
less  flowers ;  but  ill- judging  Passion  will  force  the 
gaudier  Rose  into  the  wreath,  whose  thorn  offends 
them  when  its  leaves  are  dropped.' 

Closely  akin  to  the  neatly-turned  sentiment  is  the 
epigram  and  this,  in  all  its  forms,  the  salon,  following 
Continental  models,  sought  to  stimulate.  One  thinks 
immediately  of  the  poetical  epigrams  of  Sir  Benjamin 
Backbite,  his  impromptu  verses  on  Lady  Frizzle's 
feather  catching  fire,  his  rebuses,  the  charade  which  he 
made  at  Mrs.  Drowsie's  conversazione,  and,  above  all, 
of  that  sprightly  extempore  conceit  on  Lady  Betty 
Curricle's  ponies : 

Sure  never  were  seen  two  such  beautiful  ponies ; 
Other  horses  are  Clowns  —  and  these  macaronies ; 
Nay,  to  give  'em  this  title  I'm  sure  isn't  wrong. 
Their  legs  are  so  sHm  and  their  tails  ^  are  so  long. 

1  Diary  of  Mme.  D'Arblay  2.  351. 

"  The  tails  of  macaronis'  wigs  were  notoriously  long. 


116  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

There  was  no  more  certain  way  of  achieving  a  reputa- 
tion for  wit  than  by  the  impromptu  composition  of 
these  Httle  verses.  No  lover  of  Goldsmith  will  fail  to 
remember  Garrick's  epigram  on  the  poet  who  'wrote 
like  an  angel  and  talked  like  poor  Poll.'  Less  hack- 
neyed is  the  couplet  which  Dr.  Young  produced  at  the 
*  World,'  a  club  of  gentlemen  who  were  amusing  them- 
selves after  dinner  by  scratching  verses,  with  their 
diamonds,  upon  the  wine-glasses.  Having  no  jewel 
of  his  own,  Young,  when  his  turn  came  round,  was 
obliged  to  borrow  Chesterfield's,  and  then  wrote : 

Accept  a  miracle  :  instead  of  wit. 

See  two  dull  lines  with  Stanhope's  pencil  writ.^ 

It  is  difficult  to  find  a  volume  of  eighteenth  century 
verse  that  does  not  bear  witness  to  the  popularity  of 
the  epigram.  Every  miscellany  teems  with  them. 
No  collected  edition  of  poems  was  complete  without  a 
handful  of  them.  They  are  recorded  in  every  diary 
and  commonplace-book,  and  were  exchanged  by  friends 
in  the  course  of  familiar  correspondence.  High  and 
low,  the  peer  of  wit  and  the  pretender  to  it,  vied  with 
one  another  in  the  production  of  them.  All  alike  seem 
to  have  reached  a  dead  level  of  mediocrity.  The 
charade  which  Johnson  made  in  honour  of  his  friend 
Dr.  Barnard  ^  is  no  better  and  no  worse  than  scores  of 

1  Spence's  Anecdotes  378. 

^  Boswell's  Life  4.  195.     A  specimen  of  what  this  sort  of  thing  maybe  is 
seen  in  this  epigram  of  Marmontel's,  upon  picking  up  a  lady's  pen : 

Egle,  cette  plume  est  de  celles 

Qu'a  vos  pieds  deposa  I'Amour, 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  117 

impromptu  verses  quoted  in  Walpole's  Letters  or  the 
Asylum  for  Fugitive  Pieces. 

Much  of  this,  no  doubt,  seems  trivial.  But  wherever 
the  spirit  of  the  salon  appears,  evidence  of  its  presence 
is  seen  in  the  production  and  general  esteem  of  such 
trifles :  rebuses,  anagrams,  madrigals,  enigmas,  cha- 
rades, and  holds  rimes.  The  explanation  of  it  all  goes 
back,  perhaps,  to  the  Italian  Renaissance,  when,  as 
Burckhardt  has  shown,  an  epigram  could  lay  the  foun- 
dation of  a  scholar's  celebrity  : 

It  was  held  the  greatest  of  all  triumphs  when  an 
epigram  was  mistaken  for  a  genuine  copy  from  some 
old  marble  or  when  it  was  so  good  that  all  Italy  learned 
it  by  heart,  as  happened  in  the  case  of  some  of  Bembo's. 

The  popularity  of  epigrams  in  fine  English  society 
is  amusingly  illustrated  by  the  entertainments  pro- 
vided by  a  certain  Mrs.  (afterwards  Lady)  Miller  at 
her  villa  near  Bath.  The  character  and  the  results  of 
her  attempt  to  stimulate  the  production  of  literature 
are  typical,  and,  as  they  have  left  a  considerable  record 
in  print,  it  may  be  profitable  to  consider  them  somewhat 
at  length.  She  introduced  what  she  was  pleased  to 
term  the  'little  Gallic  institution'  of  houts  rimes.  Lists 
of  riming  words  were  distributed  among  her  guests, 
who  composed  verses  suggested  by  them,  employing 
them  in  their    given  order.     The    resulting  effusions 

Quand  ce  Dieu,  fixe  sans  retour, 
Vous  laissa  lui  couper  les  ailes. 

Necker,  Nouveaux  Milanges  1.  30. 


118  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

were  then  placed  in  a  vase  decorated  with  laurel 
branches  and  pink  ribbons,  erected  upon  a  'modern 
altar.'  'It  is  at  present,'  writes  this  ingenious  lady, 
'  the  receptacle  of  all  the  contending  poetical  morsels 
which  every  other  Thursday  (formerly  Friday)  are 
drawn  out  of  it  indiscriminately,  and  read  aloud  by  the 
gentlemen  present,  each  in  his  turn.  Their  particular 
merits  are  afterwards  discussed  by  them,  and  prizes 
assigned  to  three  out  of  the  whole  that  appear  to  be 
the  most  deserving.  Their  authors  are  then,  and  not 
before,  called  for,  who  seldom  fail  to  be  announced 
either  by  themselves,  or,  if  absent,  by  their  friends. 
Then  the  prize  poems  are  read  aloud  a  second  time 
to  the  company,  each  by  its  author,  if  present,  if 
not,  by  other  Gentlemen,  and  wreaths  of  Myrtle  pre- 
sented publicly  by  the  Institutress  ^  to  each  successful 
writer.' 

When  these  verses  were  published  they  roused,  if 
not  the  general  esteem  which  the  Institutress  plainly 
expected  for  them,  the  interest  of  Miss  Burney,  the 
curiosity  of  Boswell,  and  the  mirth  of  Walpole.  The 
latter  wrote,  in  his  most  delightful  mood,  to  the  Countess 
of  Ailesbury : 

You  must  know.  Madam,  that  near  Bath  is  erected 
a  new  Parnassus,  composed  of  three  laurels,  a  myrtle- 
tree,  a  weeping-willow,  and  a  view  of  the  Avon,  which 
has   been    new    christened    Helicon.     Ten   years    ago 

^'Institutress'  is  Mrs.  Miller's  unpretending  designation  of  herself. 
The  quotation  is  from  the  preface  to  a  volume  entitled,  Poetical  Amusements 
at  a  Villa  near  Bath,  Bath  1775. 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  119 

there  lived  a  Madam  Riggs,  an  old  rough  humourist 
who  passed  for  a  wit ;  her  daughter,  who  passed  for 
nothing,  married  to  a  Captain  Miller,  full  of  good- 
natured  officiousness.  These  good  folks  were  friends 
of  Miss  Rich,  who  carried  me  to  dine  with  them  at 
Bath-Easton,  now  Pindus.  They  caught  a  little  of 
what  was  then  called  taste,  built  and  planted,  and 
begot  children,  till  the  whole  caravan  were  forced  to 
go  abroad  to  retrieve.  Alas !  Mrs.  Miller  is  returned 
a  beauty,  a  genius,  a  Sappho,  a  tenth  Muse,  as  romantic 
as  Mademoiselle  Scuderi,  and  as  sophisticated  as  Mrs. 
Vesey.  The  Captain's  fingers  are  loaded  with  cameos, 
his  tongue  runs  over  with  virtu,  and  that  both  may  con-  ^ 

tribute  to  the  improvement  of  their  own  country,  they 
have  introduced  bouts-rimes  as  a  new  discovery.  They 
hold  a  Parnassus  fair  every  Thursday,  give  out  rhymes 
and  themes,  and  all  the  flux  of  quality  at  Bath  contend 
for  the  prizes.  A  Roman  vase  dressed  with  pink  rib- 
bons and  myrtles  receives  the  poetry,  which  is  drawn 
out  every  festival ;  six  judges  of  these  Olympic  games 
retire  and  select  the  brightest  compositions,  which 
the  respective  successful  acknowledge,  kneel  to  Mrs. 
Calliope  Miller,  kiss  her  fat  hand,  and  are  crowned  by 
it  with  myrtle,  with  —  I  don't  know  what.  You 
may  think  this  is  fiction  or  exaggeration.  Be  dumb, 
unbelievers !  The  collection  is  printed,  published. 
—  Yes,  on  my  faith !  There  are  bouts-rimes  on  a 
buttered  muffin,  made  by  her  Grace  the  Duchess  of 
Northumberland ;  receipts  to  make  them  by  Corydon 
the  venerable,  alias  George  Pitt;  others  very  pretty 
by  Lord  Palmerston ;  some  by  Lord  Carlisle :  many 
by  Mrs.  Miller  herself,  that  have  no  fault  but  wanting 
metre :  and  immortality  promised  to  her  without  end 
or  measure.^ 

Mrs.  Miller's  Institution  appears,  however,  to  have 
been  an  unqualified  social  success.     The  first  edition  of 

1  Walpole's  Letters  9.  134 ;  15  January  1775. 


120  THE  SALON   AND   ENGLISH  LETTERS 

the  verses  was  exhausted  in  ten  days,^  and  a  second 
was  published  in  the  following  year.  Three  similar 
volumes  appeared  at  intervals,^  and  the  series  was  ter- 
minated only  by  the  death  of  the  Institutress.^  The 
publications  received  the  compliment  of  an  anonymous 
attack  entitled  Sappho,"^  in  which  Mrs.  ISIiller  was 
satirically  hailed  as  'Mistress  of  the  tuneful  nine'; 
but  a  more  deadly  assault  took  the  form  of  a  solemn 
congratulatory  Epistle  to  Mrs.  MillerJ'  in  which  that 
lady  is  said  to 

Shine  unmatched  in  old  or  modern  time, 
A  friend  of  Genius,  Pleasure,  Taste  and  Rhime, 
Which  daUy  thrive  beneath  thy  fostering  hand 
And  pour  the  tide  of  learning  o'er  the  land. 

An  examination  of  the  volume  published  in  1775  hardly 
seems  to  bear  out  these  statements.  The  following 
production  of  the  hostess  herself  it  is  difficult  to  describe 
with  accuracy,  for  the  word  verse  hardly  seems  appro- 
priate to  it : 

From  Castor  and  Pollux,  those  twins  of  renown. 
Arose  the  great  dance  taught  at  Lacedsemon ; 
Then  a  son  of  Achilles,  with  a  barbarous  name. 
Taught  his  soldiers  to  dance,  those  Cretans  of  fame. 
Wise  philosopher  Socrates  also  would  know. 
From  Aspasia  the  fair  how  to  well  point  a  toe. 
Pompous  nuptials  and  feasts  —  e'en  the  grave  Funerals 
Was  danc'd  at  by  princes,  priests,  people  and  all. 

1  See  the  preface  to  the  volume  for  1777.  2  1775 ;   1777 ;   178I. 

'  In  1781 ;  a  fifth  volume  had  been  announced  for  1782. 

*  London  1777.  ^  Bath  1776. 


CONVERSATION  PARTIES  121 

It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  the  verses  in  the  volume 
do  frequently  rise  from  this  level  to  that  of  mediocrity. 
The  following  specimen  of  bouts  rimes  may  serve  to 
indicate  the  type  and  contents  of  the  volume : 

Hard  to  my  muse  it  is,  I  must  confess, 

In  six  fixed  rhymes  aught  witty  to  express ; 

Why  did  I  mix  with  Wits  ?  who  must  detest 

And  crush  my  foUies  whicli  their  sense  molest. 

Thus  the  poor  mole,  who  rises  into  light 

Dies  when  he  meets  the  sun's  refulgent  might. 

There  are  other  things  to  be  said  in  amelioration  of 
the  harsh  judgments  one  is  inclined  to  pass  upon  Mrs. 
Miller.  The  later  volumes  are  certainly  less  bad  than 
the  first.  The  praise  of  Mrs.  Miller,  which  had  formed 
the  staple  of  the  first  volume,  is  somewhat  mitigated  in 
the  others,  and  the  names  of  the  contributors  occa- 
sionally emerge  into  the  borderland  of  fame.  Potter, 
William  Hayley,  Anna  Seward,  and  Christopher 
Anstey  are  worthy  of  respect,  and  a  poem  by  Garrick, 
though  worthless,  lends  a  certain  distinction  to  the 
second  volume.  Anstey's  poem.  An  Election  Ball,^ 
which  enjoyed  something  of  the  popularity  of  his 
New  Bath  Guide,  was  written  upon  a  subject  given  out 
by  Mrs.  Miller,  'The  ancient  and  modern  Dress  and 
Manners  of  the  English  Nation  compared ' ;  and  the 
Poetical  Address  which  prefaced  it  is  addressed  to  Mr. 
Miller.  In  the  former  '  Clio '  and  the  Tusculan  '  vause ' 
are  celebrated,  and  in  the   latter  the  'myrtle   sprigs' 

1  Bath  1776. 


122  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

and   'vocal   swans   of   Bath.'     These   poems   are   still 
readable. 

To  Mrs.  Miller  must  certainly  be  allowed  the  merit 
of  having  gathered  about  herself  a  group  of  persons 
who  would  have  made  the  reputation  of  any  London 
drawing-room.  Her  own  inability  to  produce  anything 
that  should  have  more  than  the  external  appearance  of 
verse  does  not  seem  to  have  repelled  those  of  higher 
ability  and  finer  taste.  For  such  a  woman  it  was  in  the 
nature  of  an  achievement  that  her  Institution  lasted 
six  years ;  and  the  four  volumes  of  so-called  poetical 
contributions  to  it  retain  a  certain  melancholy  interest 
as  showing  the  result  of  a  deliberate  attempt  by  the 
world  of  fashion  to  stimulate  the  production  of  poetry. 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Bluestocking  Club 

The  list  of  bluestocking  ladies  given  by  Hannah 
More  in  her  poem,  Bas  Bleii^  is  as  follows  :  '  Vesey  of 
verse  the  judge  and  friend,'  'Boscawen  sage,'  'bright 
Montagu,'  and  Elizabeth  Carter.  To  this  we  should 
of  course  add  the  name  of  Miss  More  herself.  The 
men  enumerated  as  members  are  Lord  Lyttelton, 
Pultney,  Earl  of  Bath,  and  Horace  Walpole.  Exactly 
the  same  list  is  given  by  Forbes  in  his  Life  of  Beattie, 
save  that  he  adds  the  name  of  Stillingfleet.  Miss 
More  mentions  certain  famous  men  as  former  habitues 
of  the  blue  drawing-room,  Garrick,  Mason,  Dr.  Johnson, 
Burke  ('apostate  now  from  social  wit'),  and  Sir  William 
Pepys.  These  five,  with  the  exception  of  Pepys,  are 
thought  of  rather  as  frequent  visitors  than  as  recog- 
nized members. 

We  must  not  assume  from  the  use  of  the  word  club 
the  existence  of  a  formally  established  society,  like  the 
great  Literary  Club,  with  rules  and  election  of  members. 
The  blues  were  drawn  together  simply  by  the  desire 
for  mutual  intercourse,  and  the  group  expanded  freely 
as  fit  associates  appeared.  No  exact  list  of  blue- 
stockings can  therefore  be  made.  Indeed,  the  list  of 
ladies    in    Hannah    More's    Sensibility,    described    as 

123 


124  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

participating  in  'the  charm  of  friendship  and  the  feast 
of  sense,'  is  somewhat  different  from  the  one  already 
quoted :  Mrs.  Boscawen,  Mrs.  Carter,  Mrs.  Montagu, 
Mrs.  Chapone,  Mrs.  Walsingham,  Mrs.  Delany,  and 
Mrs.  Barbauld.  Fanny  Burney,  Hke  Miss  More  her- 
self, is  thought  of  as  a  younger  member,^  almost  as  a 
protegee  of  the  club.  Mrs.  Thrale,  with  her  own 
coterie,  was  always  more  or  less  of  an  outsider,  as 
was  also  Mrs.  Ord.  Later,  as  we  shall  see,  the  name 
bluestocking  came  to  be  applied  to  women  who  had 
only  the  remotest  connection  with  the  original  group. 
The  origin  of  the  little  company  which  was  to  develop 
into  the  Bas  Bleu  is  now  difficult  to  discover.  Miss 
More's  poem  in  praise  of  it  did  not  appear  until  1786, 
many  years  after  its  fame  was  fully  established.  The 
verses,  begun  in  1783,  circulated  for  many  months  in 
manuscript  and  frequently  retouched,  are  the  official 
handbook  of  the  society  ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  remem- 
ber that  the  author  did  not  come  into  contact  with  the 
group  during  its  earlier  history,  and  that  her  account 
of  its  origin  is  therefore  not  to  be  taken  as  indubitable 
evidence.  She  divides  the  honour  of  having  instituted 
the  bluestocking  conversazioni  between  Mrs.  Montagu 
and  Mrs.  Boscawen.  Madame  D'Arblay,  on  the  other 
hand,  assigns  it  exclusively  to  Mrs.  Vesey.-  In  any 
case,  it  is  certain  that  Mrs.  Montagu  speedily  became 
the  leading  person  in  the  club,  for  Lyttelton,  apparently 

1  She  calls  herself  a  bluestocking  in  1780.     Diary  1.  403. 
*  Memoirs  of  Dr.  Burney  2.  262. 


THE  BLUESTOCKmG  CLUB  125 

as  early  as  1765,^  refers  to  her  as  'la  belle  presidente.' 
The  earliest  meetings  may  well  have  occurred  at  her 
literary  breakfasts,  which  have  been  already  described. ^ 
It  is  not  unreasonable  to  assume  that  the  'club'  was 
already  in  existence  during  the  later  fifties,  for  it  was 
well  known  to  Admiral  Boscawen,  who  died  in  1761. 
A  prominent  member  of  it,  mentioned  by  Miss  More, 
was  the  Earl  of  Bath,  who  died  in  1764.  But  the 
Bas  Bleu  did  not  attain  the  meridian  of  its  fame  till 
many  years  later. 

From  its  very  beginning  the  object  of  the  club  was 
to  promote  literary  conversation  as  the  chief  pleasure 
of  social  life.  That  such  conversation  was  a  stiff  and 
solemn  business  one  hardly  needs  to  be  told.  Blue- 
stocking letters  alone  are  a  sufficient  proof  of  it.  In 
the  Bas  Bleu  we  hear  much  of  the  false  wit  of  the  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet, 

Where  wit  and  point  and  equivoque 
Distorted  every  word  they  spoke. 

The  English  bluestockings  will  have  none  of  this. 
They  repudiate  wit  that  is  French  and  wit  that  is 
tainted,  and  exalt  common  sense  in  its  stead.  Hannah 
More  declares  that  the  solid  basis  of  conversation  is 
learning ;   it  is  for  conversation,  she  cries,  that 

The  sage  consumes  his  midnight  toil ; 
And  keeps  his  vigils  to  produce 
Materials  for  thy  future  use. 

*  See  below,  p.  140.  ^  See  above,  p.  105. 


126  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Such  praise  of  serious  conversation  enables  us  to  guess 
at  the  preparation  which  earnest  souls  made  for  the 
conversazioni  in  which  they  hoped  to  shine.  To  Lady 
Louisa  Stuart  the  group  at  Mrs.  Montagu's  had  about 
it  a  suspicion  of  acting  before  an  audience.  'If  you 
had  good  luck,'  she  says,  'you  might  not  only  be 
greatly  amused  at  Mrs.  Montagu's,  but  carry  away 
much  that  was  well  worth  remembering.  But  then, 
also,  the  circular  form  is  not  less  convenient  to  prosers 
and  people  who  love  to  hear  themselves  talk,  so  you 
might,  on  the  contrary,  come  in  for  the  most  tiresome 
dissertations,  the  dullest  long  stories,  the  flattest  jokes 
anywhere  to  be  found.'  ^  Lyttelton  himself  gave 
similar  testimony.  Fanny  Burney's  words  seem  to 
show  that  the  bluestockings  were  occasionally  bored 
with  themselves  :  'I  respect  and  esteem  them,'  she  writes 
in  April  1784,  'but  they  require  an  exertion  to  which 
I  am  not  always  inclined.'  There  is,  moreover,  the 
indirect  evidence  afforded  by  Boswell.  The  greatest 
judge  of  conversation  then  living  had  been  repeatedly 
in  the  presence  of  the  bluestockings ;  he  never  wearied 
of  expressing  his  admiration  for  them ;  he  had  watched 
them  swarming  about  his  master ;  he  had  taken  the 
trouble  to  investigate  the  origin  of  their  society ;  but 
he  never  thought  it  worth  while  to  record  their 
talk. 

Much  of  the  fame  of  the  bluestockings  was  due  to 
the  name  by  which  they  had  come  to  be  known.     It 

1  Cf.  the  whole  passage.     Home's  Lady  Louisa  Stuart,  pp.  159-60. 


THE  BLUESTOCKING  CLUB  127 

caught  the  pubHc  attention  quickly,  and  has  remained 
a  useful  addition  to  the  English  vocabulary.  The 
word  bluestocking  presents  an  interesting  but  perhaps 
insoluble  problem  in  etymology,  or  rather  in  slang. 
Various  explanations  of  the  term  exist,  but,  though 
they  are  not  irreconcilable,  they  are  not  wholly  satis- 
factory. It  would  seem  as  though  a  source  ought  to  be 
found  in  seventeenth  century  France  or  sixteenth 
century  Italy  ^ ;  but  none  has  yet  come  to  light.  Mills 
in  his  History  of  Chivalryl^  (1825)  traces  the  word 
back  to  the  Society  'de  la  Calza,'  founded  in  Venice 
in  the  year  1400.  The  society  lasted  till  1590,  when, 
he  continues,  'the  rejected  title'  —  by  which  presum- 
ably he  means  calza  turchina,  though  he  nowhere  men- 
tions it  —  '  crossed  the  Alps,  and  found  a  congenial 
soil  in  the  flippancy  and  literary  triflings  of  Parisian 
society.  ...  It  diverged  from  France  to  England.' 
No  evidence  for  the  remarkable  migrations  of  this 
title  is  adduced  by  Mills.  The  words  has  bleu  are 
unknown  to  French  lexicographers  save  as  a  trans- 
lation  of   the   English  bluestocking ;  ^  so  that  Mills's 

1  An  Italian  equivalent  for  bluestocking  is  unknown  to  Tomaseo  and 
Bellini.  In  a  pamphlet,  entitled  Pursuits  of  Literature,  printed  in  1797, 
T.  J.  Mathias  gives  the  term  calza  azzurra  as  though  from  Ariosto,  quoting, 

Fortunata  la  Calza  azzurra  e  d'  oro 
Si  grate  a  Febo  e  al  santo  Aonio  coro. 

The  first  line  quoted,  however,  is  not  by  Ariosto  at  all,  but  by  Mathias 
himself.     Cf.  Orlando  Furioso,  ed.  Papini,  canto  46,  st.  3. 

2  1.  379  ff. 

3  Larousse,  Grande  Encyclopedic. 


128  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

statements  respecting  the  peregrinations  of  the  term 
seem  to  be  the  result  of  his  own  imagination.^ 

On  the  other  hand,  when  we  turn  to  EngHsh  litera- 
ture, we  find  that  the  term  was  used  as  early  as  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  first  occurrence  of  it  noted 
by  Murray,  in  the  New  English  Dictionary,  is  in  Bram- 
ston's  Autobiography  (1683),  in  reference  to  the  Little 
Parliament  of  1653  :  'That  Blew-stocking  Parliament.' 
It  is  here  plainly  used  as  a  sneer  at  the  unostentatious 
dress  of  the  Puritans,  who  eschewed  silk  stockings. 
Reference  to  coarse  or  ugly  stockings  had  been  a  well- 
known  form  of  abuse  for  years.  Prince  Hal  makes  use  of 
a  similar  term,  'puke-stocking'  —  puke  being  a  kind  of 
bluish-black  woollen,  not  worn  by  courtiers  —  in  sneer- 
ing at  the  keeper  of  the  Boar's  Head  tavern. ^  The  word 
bluestocking,  even  after  its  application  to  literary  ladies, 
retained  something  of  a  derogatory  flavour ;  it  was  con- 
sidered by  some  a  term  of  reproach,^  and  was  bitterly 
resented. 

Just  when  the  term  was  first  applied  to  literary 
ladies,  it  is  diflBcult  to  say;^  the  period  of  its  great 

^  Mills's  explanation  of  the  word  was  adopted  (without  acknowledgment) 
by  Dr.  Brewer  in  his  Dictionary  of  Phrase  and  Fable,  and  has  therefore  had 
considerable  currency.  It  has  been  recently  repeated,  notably  in  the 
Quarterly  Review  for  January  1903,  in  an  article  entitled  'The  Queen  of  the 
Bluestockings,'  by  an  anonymous  writer,  and  in  Mrs.  Gaussen's  A  Later  Pepys. 

2  King  Henry  IV,  Part  I,  Act  2,  scene  iv. 

'  Home's  Lady  Louisa  Stuart,  p.  156 ;  cf .  the  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arhlay 
4.65. 

*The  following  quotation  from  Mrs.  Montagu's  Letters  (4.  117)  has  been 
cited  (notably  in  the  New  English  Dictionary  and  in  Hill's  edition  of  Boswell's 


THE  BLUESTOCKING  CLUB  129 

popularity  was  in  the  decade  of  the  80's.  By  that 
time  it  had  caught  the  attention  and  roused  the  curi- 
osity of  Boswell,  who  gives  the  following  explanation  of 
it: 

About  this  time  [1781]  it  was  much  the  fashion  for 
several  ladies  to  have  evening  assemblies,  where  the 
fair  sex  might  participate  in  conversation  with  literary 
and  ingenious  men,  animated  by  a  desire  to  please. 
These  societies  were  denominated  Blue-stocking  Clubs, 
the  origin  of  which  title  being  little  known,  it  may  be 
worth  while  to  relate  it.  One  of  the  most  eminent 
members  of  those  societies,  when  they  first  commenced, 
was  Mr.  Stillingfleet,  whose  dress  was  remarkably 
grave,  and  in  particular  it  was  observed,  that  he  wore 
blue  stockings.  Such  was  the  excellence  of  his  con- 
versation, that  his  absence  was  felt  as  so  great  a  loss 
that  it  used  to  be  said,  'We  can  do  nothing  without 
the  blue  stockings,'  and  thus  by  degrees  the  title  was 
established.^ 

Forbes,  in  his  Life  of  Beattie,  throws  new  light  on 
the  matter : 

Mr.  Stillingfleet,  being  somewhat  of  an  humourist  in 
his  habits  and  manners,  and  a  little  negligent  in  his 
dress,  literally  wore  grey  stockings,  from  which  cir- 
cumstance, Admiral  Boscawen  used,  by  way  of  pleas- 

Life  of  Johnson)  as  showing  that  the  term  bluestocking  was  in  use  as  early  as 
March  8, 1757,  on  which  day  Mrs.  Montagu  writes :  'I  assure  you  our  philos- 
opher (Mr.  StiUingfleet)  is  so  much  a  man  of  pleasure,  he  has  left  off  his  old 
friends  and  his  blue  stockings,  and  is  at  operas  and  other  gay  assemblies 
every  night.'  Personally  I  do  not  think  that  this  can  be  regarded  as  an 
occurrence  of  the  word  bluestocking  at  all.  I  incline  to  think  that  Mrs. 
Montagu  means  no  more  than  she  literally  says,  that  Mr.  Stillingfleet  has 
left  off  the  homely  garb  for  which  he  was  noted.  But,  in  any  case,  it  is 
interesting  as  a  reference  to  the  fame  of  his  stockings,  and  tends  to  support 
Boswell's  explanation  of  the  term. 
1  Life  4.  108. 
K 


130  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

antry,  to  call  them  the  'Blue-Stocking  Society,'  as  if 
to  indicate  that  when  these  brilliant  friends  met,  it 
was  not  for  the  purpose  of  forming  a  dressed  assembly. 
A  foreigner  of  distinction,  hearing  the  expression, 
translated  it  literally,  'Bas  Bleu,'  by  which  these 
meetings  came  to  be  afterwards  distinguished.^ 

Madame  D'Arblay,  writing  in  1832,  asserted  that  it 
was  Mrs.  Vesey  who  first  encouraged  Stillingfleet  to 
appear  in  his  homely  dress;  '"Pho,pho,"  cried  she  .  .  . 
"don't  mind  dress  !  Come  in  your  blue  stockings!"  '  ^ 
and  there  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  for  rejecting  this 
additional  detail.  It  is  at  least  not  inconsistent  with 
the  facts  already  cited. 

The  'mistake'  made  by  the  'foreigner  of  distinction' 
is  plainly  referred  to  in  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Carter  to 
Mrs.  Montagu,  in  reference  to  the  title  Bas  Bleu  : 
'Do  not  you  remember  last  winter  that  Madame  de 
Montier  (or  some  such  name;  she  was,  however,  the 
French  Ambassadress)  desired  somebody  to  introduce 
Monsieur  —  son  Mari  to  the  Bas  bleu  ? '  ^ 

These  explanations,  which  form  a  fairly  consistent 
series,  and  which  commended  themselves  to  the  blue- 
stockings, ought  to  be  good  enough  for  the  twentieth 

1  1.  210  n. ;  cf.  a  similar  account  by  Pennington  (who  remembered  the 
salons)  in  his  Letters  of  Mrs.  Carter  to  Mrs.  Montagu. 

2  Memoirs  of  Dr.  Burney  2.  262-63.  No  explanation  of  the  term  blue- 
stocking is  given  in  the  Diary. 

3  Letters  of  Mrs.  Carter  to  Mrs.  Montagu  3.  202 ;  22  September  1783. 
The  occurrence  is  referred  to  by  Hannah  More  in'  the  'Advertisement' 
prefixed  to  Bas  Bleu  (1786).  The  story  was  apparently  reported  to  the 
blues  by  Lady  Dartrey.  See  Pepys's  letter  to  Hannah  More,  in  A  Later 
Pepys  2.  235 ;  13  August  1783. 


THE  BLUESTOCKING  CLUB  131 

century.  Some,  however,  insist  on  a  more  picturesque 
interpretation,  probably  in  protest  against  the  impHca- 
tion  that  the  first  bluestocking  was  a  man.  An  explana- 
tion first  offered  in  1861  by  Mr.  Hayward,  in  the  second 
edition  of  his  Autobiography  of  Mrs.  Piozzi,  was  given 
to  him  by  a  lady  who  said  she  received  it  from  Lady 
Crewe  in  the  course  of  a  conversation  held  in  1816. 
It  runs  as  follows  : 

Lady  Crewe  told  me  that  her  mother  (Mrs.  Greville), 
the  Duchess  of  Portland,  and  Mrs.  Montagu  were  the 
first  who  began  the  conversation  parties  in  imitation 
of  the  noted  one,  temj).  Madame  de  Sevigne,  at  Rue  St. 
Honore.  Madame  de  Polignac,  one  of  the  first  guests, 
came  in  blue  silk  stockings,  then  the  newest  fashion 
in  Paris.  Mrs.  Greville  and  all  the  lady  members  of 
Mrs.  Montagu's  club,  adopted  the  mode.  A  foreign 
gentleman,  after  spending  an  evening  at  Mrs.  Monta- 
gu's soiree,  wrote  to  tell  a  friend  of  the  charming  in- 
tellectual party  who  had  one  rule ;  '  they  wear  blue 
stockings  as  a  distinction.' 

It  would  hardly  be  necessary  to  notice  this  account 
at  all,  were  it  not  that  it  has  been  seriously  presented 
in  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  as  the  correct 
explanation,  has  been  cited  by  an  anonymous  writer  in 
the  Quarterly  Review  (January  1903),  and  recently  re- 
peated with  full  approval.^  It  must  be  noticed,  in  the 
first  place,  that  Mr.  Hayward  himself  does  not  accept 
the  story,  inasmuch  as  he  banishes  it  to  a  footnote,  and 
retains  the  traditional  account  in  the  body  of  his  work. 
Again,  the  sole  source  of  his  authority  is  the  hearsay 

^  Gaussen's  A  Later  Pepys  1.  42. 


132  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

evidence  of  an  anonymous  lady  given  a  century  after 
the  fact.  We  are  three  stages  away  from  the  original 
informant,  without  written  evidence  of  any  kind  until 
1816.  Moreover,  the  anecdote  bears  upon  its  face  all 
the  marks  of  a  story  hen  trovato.  Those  who  can  think 
of  Mrs.  Montagu  and  her  friends  as  genially  display- 
ing blue  stockings  as  a  sort  of  badge  are,  to  say  the 
least,  but  ill  acquainted  with  certain  nice  prejudices 
of  our  literary  ladies. 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  there  was  about  this 
phrase  that  vague  yet  eloquent  connotation  which  is  the 
peculiar  property  of  slang  and  in  which  the  explana- 
tions given  above  are,  with  the  exception  of  the  last, 
conspicuously  deficient.  In  no  other  way  can  the 
sudden  popularity  of  the  word  be  accounted  for.^  The 
tendency  to  play  with  the  phrase  became  evident  at 
once :  '  When  will  you  bluestocking  yourself  and  come 
amongst  us  ?'  wrote  Walpole  to  Hannah  More.^ 
'You  may  put  on  your  blue  stockings,'  wrote  Mrs. 
Chapone  to  Miss  Burney,^  'if  you  have  got  any  boots 
to  walk  about  in  the  mornings,  I  shall  like  you  as  well 
in  them.'  The  word  was  of  course  presently  reduced 
to  blue,"^  partly,  no  doubt,  because  of  the  associations 

1  Those  who  care  to  study  the  playful  development  of  the  word  may 
consult  the  sprightly  article,  'Bas  bleu,'  in  the  earlier  edition  of  Larousse's 
Dictionary. 

2  Letters  13.  217 ;   13  November  1784. 

'  Diary  of  Madame  D' Arhlay  5.  50 ;   27  December  1791. 

^  Much  earlier  certainly  than  the  date  (1790)  given  in  the  New  English 
Dictionary,  'In  the  evening  we  had  a  very  strong  reinforcement  of  blues,' 
wrote  Hannah  More  in  March  1783  (Roberts'  Memoirs  of  More  1.  275); 


THE  BLUESTOCKING  CLUB  133 

of  this  colour  with  the  salons  ever  since  the  Ram- 
bouillet  days.  When  Fanny  Burney  was  asked  what 
Johnson  called  Mrs.  Montagu,  she  replied,  '"Queen," 
to  be  sure  !  "Queen  of  the  Blues  !"  '  ^  and  at  court  she 
was  amused  at  a  gentleman  who  was  ashamed  to  be 
found  'reading  to  a  blue.'  ^ 

Two  facts  emerge  clearly  from  these  quotations. 
In  the  first  place,  we  derive  from  Mrs.  Carter's  letter 
a  definite  date  for  the  origin  of  the  phrase  has  bleu, 
the  winter  of  1782-3.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  ob- 
vious that  this  French  phrase  and  the  anecdote  con- 
nected with  it  account  in  large  measure  for  the  popu- 
larity of  the  word  bluestocking.  That  word  had,  as 
we  have  seen,  existed  before ;  ^  indeed  the  French  lady 
who  first  used  the  words  bas  bleu  was  but  trying  to 
translate  an  English  phrase  already  familiar  to  her ; 
but  it  was  only  when  that  phrase  assumed  a  kind  of 
international  significance  by  appearing  in  French 
form  that  the  English  public  generally  took  up  the 
earlier  word  bluestocking.  From  1782  onwards  the 
word  becomes  common.  Moreover,  it  was  at  the  same 
period  that  public  attention  began  to  be  directed  to 
the  Bluestocking  Club,  and  the  date  1782  may  con- 
veniently be  taken  as  marking  its  florescence. 

'There  was  everything  delectable  in  the  blue  way,'  writes  the  same  author 
in  1784  in  reference  to  Mrs.  Ord's  conversazione  {lb.  1.  317). 

1  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  2.  236;   9  December  1783. 

2  lb.  4.  66 ;    1  August  1788. 

^  Cf.  Fanny  Burney,  'He  had  no  small  reverence  for  us  blue-stockings.' 
Diary  1.  403;  June  1780. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  London  Salon 

The  London  salon  corresponds  well  enough,  in  its 
external  aspects,  with  its  Parisian  prototype.  If  we 
apply  the  fivefold  analysis  given  in  the  second  chapter 
of  this  work,  we  shall  discover  no  essential  difference 
in  method  between  the  two  institutions.  Differences 
in  result  there  undoubtedly  were,  but  the  two  were 
alike  in  aim.  The  London  salon,  like  the  Parisian,  for 
example,  depended  for  its  influence  partly  on  the  beauty 
and  interest  of  its  material  surroundings.  Mrs. 
Montagu  fascinated  her  guests  with  Chinese  rooms, 
Athenian  rooms,  feather  rooms,  rooms  decorated  by 
Angelica  Kauffmann,  and  other  gorgeous  apartments 
in  her  house  in  Hill  Street  and  in  her  palace  in  Portman 
Square.  Mrs.  Vesey,  less  ambitious  and  more  inti- 
mate, entertained  her  friends  in  a  '  blue-room '  or  '  green- 
room,' and  often  in  her  little  dressing-room  which  Mrs. 
Carter  called  'the  unostentatious  receptacle  of  liberal 
society  *  ^  —  unostentatious,  no  doubt,  but  bizarre 
and  successfully  bizarre  like  everything  that  Mrs. 
Vesey  touched. 

Like  the  French  hostesses,  these  women  kept  up  in 

*  A  Series  of  Letters  4.  218. 
134 


THE  LONDON  SALON  135 

their  assemblies  a  tone  that  was  at  once  aristocratic 
and  literary ;  they  made  conversation  the  chief  enter- 
tainment of  the  drawing-room,  and  the  patronage  of 
letters  their  most  elegant  aim.  Each  of  them  attached 
to  herself  —  perhaps  it  would  be  more  proper  to  say, 
attached  herself  to  —  some  writer,  who  frequently 
repaid  her  friendship  with  tributes  in  verse.  These 
writers  were,  in  general,  women ;  and  the  friendships 
of  the  London  salon  are  usually,  though  not  always, 
feminine.  They  ofifer,  therefore,  as  we  shall  see  later, 
a  notable  contrast  to  literary  friendships  in  Parisian 
salons. 

Various  English  women  —  Mrs.  Cholmondeley,  Mrs. 
Crewe,  Lady  Lucan,  Lady  Hervey,  Mrs.  Greville,  Mrs. 
Catherine  Macaulay  —  had  studied  the  Parisian  salon 
at  first  hand ;  but  none  of  them  were  so  familiar  with 
it,  none  so  intimately  acquainted  with  various  Parisian 
hostesses,  as  Mrs.  Montagu.  As  early  as  1750  Madame 
du  Bocage  visited  her  in  London  and  took  breakfast 
at  her  house  in  Hill  Street.  The  two  ladies  paid  elab- 
orate court  to  each  other.  Montagu  presented  du 
Bocage  with  compliments  and  an  edition  of  Milton, 
and  du  Bocage  (who  was  a  professed  poet)  replied  with 
compliments  and  a  string  of  riming  couplets,  setting 
forth  the  merits  of  Montagu.^ 

*  Montaigu,  tes  dons  precieux 
M'assurent  de  ta  bienveillance, 
Les  miens,  peu  dignes  de  tes  yeux, 
Te  prouvent  mon  obeissance. 
Ainsi  partout  on  voit  les  Dieux 


136  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Again,  when  Madame  Necker  was  in  England,  many 
years  later,  Mrs.  Montagu  saw  much  of  her.  The 
French  lady,  like  every  one,  was  pleased  with  her  amia- 
bility, and,  again  like  every  one,  amused  at  the  stiffness 
of  her  conversation.  1  When,  in  1775,  Mrs.  Montagu 
went  to  Paris,  her  associations  with  the  Neckers  be- 
came fairly  intimate.  She  was  presented  to  'all  the 
beaux  esprits,'  and  was  even  taken  to  see  Madame 
Geoffrin,  whose  glory  now  was  waning.  On  the  sixth 
of  July  1776,  she  met  Madame  du  Deffand  at  dinner, 
and  found  her  gay  and  lively.  Madame  du  Deffand's 
comments  on  the  bluestocking,  in  her  letters  to  Wal- 
pole,  are  singularly  indulgent,  until  corrected  by  Wal- 
pole.  She  is  polite,  thinks  Madame  du  Deffand,  but 
not  over  pedantic,^  and  'ennuyeuse,  sans  doute,  mais 
bonne  femme.'  Mrs.  Montagu  hired  a  house  at  Chail- 
lot,  where  she  gave  suppers  for  Madame  du  Deffand  and 

Recevoir  des  chants  ennuyeux 

Pour  les  biens  que  leur  main  dispense. 

Tes  bienfaits  me  sont  plus  flatteurs 

Que  les  tresors  de  la  fortune, 

Toujours  aveugle  en  ses  faveurs, 

Elle  prodigue  les  honneurs 

A  ceux  dent  la  voix  I'importune ; 

Mais  tes  regards  doux  et  perQants 

Du  vrai  merite  ont  la  balance ; 

Je  juge  aussi  par  tes  presents 

Qu'ils  ont  souvent  de  I'indulgenee. 

Du  Bocage,  Lettres  sur  VAngleterre, 

p.  50 ;   25  May  1750. 

1  Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works  2.  179 ;  30  September  1776. 

2  Lettres  d,  Walpole  3.  243,  256. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  137 

the  rest.  That  she  flattered  them  all,  after  the  most 
approved  Parisian  fashion,  no  one  who  has  read  her 
letter  to  Madame  du  Deffand  can  doubt.  It  is  one  of 
the  most  skilful  pieces  of  compliment  which  she  ever 
devised,  and  was  sent  with  a  gift  of  two  beautiful  scent- 
boxes.  Witness  the  following  extract,  and  let  the 
reader  remember  that  Madame  du  Deffand  was  blind. 

II  ne  me  reste  qu'une  ressource  ;  c'est  de  vous  adresser 
comme  a  une  divinite  et  vous  offrir  simplement  de 
I'encens  ;  c'est  le  culte  le  plus  pur  et  le  moins  temeraire. 
Je  vous  prie,  madame,  de  me  permettre  de  vous  offrir 
deux  cassolettes,  ou  j'ai  mis  des  aromatiques.^ 

In  spite  of  the  success  of  her  Parisian  visit,  it  may 
be  questioned  whether  Mrs.  Montagu  was  wholly 
satisfied  with  the  spirit  of  the  salons  she  visited.  She 
had  gone  to  Paris  with  the  avowed  intention  of  search- 
ing, among  the  provincial  nobility,  for  *some  who  are 
more  in  the  ton  of  Louis  XIV's  court'  ^  than  the  ladies 
of  Versailles.  It  was,  as  one  might  have  suspected, 
the  Rambouillet  tradition  that  attracted  her,  rather 
than  the  later  salon  with  its  freer  thought  and  freer 
manners,  and  its  constant  change  of  favourites.  She 
should  have  gone  to  Paris  at  least  as  early  as  the  days 
of  Madame  de  Lambert. 

But  it  is  certain  that  Mrs.  Montagu  never  succeeded 
in  attaining  to  the  ease  of  the  Parisian  salon.  Friends 
feared  that  she  would  come  back  more  artificial  than 
ever.     Mrs.  Boscawen  wished  that  she  might  get  by 

1  Ih.  3.  383.  2  Forbes's  Lije  of  Beattie  1.  389 ;  3  September  1775. 


138  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

heart  Mrs.  Chapone's  chapter  on  Simplicity.^  But 
there  was  no  such  thing  as  simplicity  in  Mrs.  Montagu's 
nature :  all  her  instincts  were  for  the  elaborate,  her 
methods  in  all  things  complicated,  her  manner  grand, 
not  easy.  Her  assemblies  became  even  larger  and  more 
overpowering;  the  number  of  'the  Great'  grew  con- 
stantly larger. 

Her  salon  was  inevitably  the  reflection  of  her  own 
character.  She  could  be,  as  Mrs.  Thrale  witnessed, 
'brilliant  in  diamonds,  solid  in  judgment,  critical  in 
talk ' ;  ^  she  could  be,  as  Johnson  freely  admitted, 
'par  pluribus  .  .  .  variety  in  one.'  ^  But  there  was 
a  certain  stiffness  in  her  character  that  inevitably 
communicated  itself  to  her  assemblies.  Mrs.  Chapone, 
who  had  every  reason  to  love  her,  wrote  to  Pepys  that 
he  would  always  find  in  her  good  nature,  'though  not 
accompanied  with  remarkable  softness.'  ^  Fanny  Bur- 
ney  was  from  the  first  rather  overwhelmed  by  her  grand 
manner,  and  Mrs.  Delany  found  at  one  of  her  assem- 
blies 'a  formal,  formidable  circle,'  where  she  had  only 
'a  whisper  with  Mrs.  Boscawen,  another  with  Lady 
Bute,  and  a  wink  from  the  Duchess  of  Portland  —  poor 
diet  for  one  who  loves  a  plentiful  meal  of  social  friend- 
ship.' ^  Six  years  later  she  was  so  dazzled  by  the 
brilliancy  of  one  of  Mrs.  Montagu's  assemblies  that 
she  fled  incontinently. 

1  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  5. 165.       ^Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblayl.iGO. 
»  Letters  2.  149;   1  May  1780.  *  A  Later  Pepys  1.  404. 

*  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  4.  204-205. 


THE  LONDON  S.VLON  139 

Lady  Louisa  Stuart,  who  evidently  did  not  like  Mrs. 
Montagu,  calls  attention  to  another  defect.  '  There 
was  a  deplorable  lack  ...  of  that  art  of  kneading  the 
mass  well  together,  which  I  have  known  possessed  by 
women  far  her  inferiors.  As  her  company  came  in,  a 
heterogeneous  medley,  so  they  went  out,  each  individ- 
ual feeling  himself  single,  isolated,  and  (to  borrow  a 
French  phrase)  embarrassed  with  his  own  person ; 
which  might  be  partly  owing  to  the  awkward  position 
of  the  furniture,  the  mal-arrangement  of  tables  and 
chairs.  Everything  in  that  house,  as  if  under  a  spell, 
was  sure  to  form  itself  into  a  circle  or  semicircle.'  ^ 
But  all  this  is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  testimony 
of  Lord  Lyttelton.  Mrs,  Montagu  was  destined  to 
receive  the  unkindest  thrust  from  her  own  familiar 
friend.  At  some  time  in  the  decade  of  the  sixties. 
Lord  Lyttelton  wrote  an  elaborate  letter  to  a  friend 
in  criticism  of  the  modern  wits,  whom  he  proclaimed 
'not  worth  a  beadsman's  rosary.'  The  following 
passage  ^  can  refer  only  to  Mrs.  Montagu : 

No  one  can  take  more  pains  than  Mrs.  M to  be 

surrounded  with  men  of  wit ;  she  bribes,  she  pensions, 
she  flatters,  gives  excellent  dinners,  is  herself  a  very 
sensible  woman,  and  of  very  pleasing  manners ;    not 

^  Home's  Lady  Louisa  Stuart,  p.  158. 

2  The  letter  is  undated,  but,  as  it  refers  to  the  death  of  Lord  Bath,  it  must 
be  later  than  1764.  Burke  is  strangely  criticised  for  'an  intemperate 
vivacity  of  genius ' ;  the  common  charge  is  made  against  Garrick  that  he  is 
himself  only  on  the  stage,  'and  an  actor  everywhere  else.'  Johnson  is  not 
mentioned.  The  palm  is  given  to  Lord  Chatham  among  living  wits.  Lyttel- 
ton's  Letters  (1780),  pp.  122  ff. 


140  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

young,  indeed,  but  that  is  out  of  the  question ;  —  and, 
in  spite  of  all  these  encouragements,  which,  one  would 
think,  might  make  wits  spring  out  of  the  ground,  the 
conversations  of  her  house  are  too  often  critical  and 
pedantic,  —  something  between  the  dullness  and  the 
pertness  of  learning.  They  are  perfectly  chaste,  and 
generally  instructive;  but  a  cool  and  quiet  observer 
would  sometimes  laugh  to  see  how  difficult  a  matter 
it  is  for  la  belle  Presidente  to  give  colour  and  life  to  her 
literary  circles. 

There  was,  moreover,  evidently  much  of  the  fevime 
savante  about  Mrs.  Montagu.  Walpole  described  her 
in  his  most  merciless  manner  as  a  '  piece  of  learned  non- 
sense' ;  she  and  her  friends,  he  continues,  'vie  with  one 
another  till  they  are  as  unintelligible  as  the  good  folks 
at  Babel.'  ^  This  of  course  is  not  fair.  When  was 
Walpole  ever  fair?  But  it  certainly  may  be  taken 
as  evidence  that  Mrs.  Montagu  did  not  hesitate  to 
make  a  display  of  her  knowledge.  She  had  mastered 
the  art,  no  doubt,  of  wearing  her  learning  gracefully, 
but  never  that  of  gracefully  dispensing  with  it.  It 
cumbers  her  correspondence.  With  Garrick  she  must 
discuss  Plautus,  Terence,  and  Moliere,  with  Elizabeth 
Carter  the  Ethics  of  Aristotle,  with  Beattie  the  Greek 
dramatists,  Ossian,  Homer,  and  the  'wilder  Oriental 
poets.'  But  the  reader  has  throughout  the  feeling 
that  the  writer  is  making  the  best  of  resources  that 
are  somewhat  limited  and  undisciplined.  Her  know- 
ledge of  the  classics  was  at  best  amateurish. 

But  this  deficiency  —  if  such  it  be  —  was  not  fatal. 

1  Letters  11.  366  and  368;  9  and  14  January  1781. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  141 

The  learning  of  a  professional  scholar  is  by  no  means 
essential  in  the  mistress  of  a  salon.  It  may,  indeed, 
as  I  have  already  shown,  prove  a  serious  obstacle  to  her 
success ;  for  the  means  by  which  she  diffuses  her  in- 
fluence are  of  a  totally  different  sort.  With  more 
essential  things,  high  social  rank,  a  large  fortune,  wit, 
interest  in  the  course  of  literature,  and  a  faith  in  her 
own  power  to  influence  it  for  good,  Mrs.  Montagu  was 
richly  endowed.  Without  her  there  would  have  been 
no  London  salons ;  for  all  existed  in  more  or  less 
conscious  imitation  of  hers.  She  alone  succeeded  in 
becoming  a  patron  of  letters.  To  say  that  she  did  not 
equal  the  great  Frenchwomen  in  this  art  is  merely  to 
say  that  she  was  not  a  genius.  She  had  the  power  of 
attracting  people  of  real  importance  to  her  drawing- 
room,  and  even  those  who  ridiculed  her  social  methods 
were  obliged  to  admit  that  they  produced  an  effect. 
That  effect  it  is  dij05cult  to  estimate  with  precision  ;  for 
it  is  by  no  means  identical  with  that  which  she  pro- 
duced by  her  own  writings  or  even  by  her  patronage 
of  writers.  She  has  the  honour  of  having  assisted  in 
spreading  the  esteem  in  which  literature  and  men  of 
letters  were  held  at  the  close  of  the  century,  as  opposed 
to  the  anomaly  of  their  position  fifty  years  earlier. 
Her  achievement  is  not  the  less  real  because  it  cannot 
be  exactly  calculated. 

A  far  more  lovable  figure  than  Mrs.  Montagu  is 
her    friendly    rival,    Elizabeth    Vesey.     Though    the 


142  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

daughter  of  a  bishop,  the  wife  of  a  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  mistress  of  as  popular  a  drawing-room  as 
could  be  found  in  London,  she  was  as  free  from  vanity 
as  from  pretensions  to  literary  gifts.  She  never 
dreamed  of  shining  as  a  critical  essayist ;  she  scribbled 
no  verses.  She  was  a  withered  old  lady  with  the  heart 
of  a  child,  who  amused  everybody  by  her  enthusiasm 
and  her  naive  manners,  which  were  always  a  bit  slip- 
shod. She  was  so  notoriously  informal  that  her  guests 
forgot  their  elegant  reserve,  and  became,  like  her, 
good-humoured  and  lively.  She  moves  about  her 
crowded  assemblies  like  a  fairy  crone,  her  parchment 
skin  seamed  and  shrivelled  with  age,  her  ear-trumpet 
dangling  from  her  neck,  while  she  distributes  her 
promiscuous  company,  pats  her  guests  on  the  arm, 
breaks  up  their  cliques,  and  squares  the  social  circle.* 
She  touched  every  one  into  good  spirits  with  what 
Elizabeth  Carter  called  the  wave  of  her  fairy  wand.^ 
Everybody  adored  her,  men  and  women  alike.  To 
Martin  Sherlock^  she  was  'good  Mrs.  Vesey  —  indeed 
she  is  all  goodness';  and  Horace  Walpole  bursts  into 
momentary  enthusiasm,^  'What  English  heart  ever 
excelled  hers  ? ' 

If  she  found  favour  in  the  eyes  of  all  London,  It 
was  not  by  any  charms  of  person,  for  at  the  time  of 
her  great  fame,  she  had  long  since  lost  every  trace  of 
beauty.     In   1779,  when  Miss  Burney  first  met  her, 

^  Roberts,  Memoirs  of  More  1.  298.  ^  Carter,  Series  of  Letters  4.  141. 

2  Letters  on  Several  Subjects  2.  166.  ■•  Letters  14.  5. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  143 

she  was  a  very  pattern  of  old  age,  with  *the  most 
wrinkled,  sallow,  time-beaten  face'  ever  seen,^  But 
her  vivid  imagination  never  deserted  her,  and  to  the 
sophisticated  people  by  whom  she  was  surrounded  she 
seemed  a  sort  of  ethereal  meddler  in  human  affairs. 
Her  friends  called  her  the  Sylph. ^  Mrs.  Carter  could 
detect  nothing  mortal  in  her  save  a  love  of  London,^ 
and  felt  about  her  a  suspicion  of  'coral  groves  and 
submarine  palaces.'  ^  If  she  was  ordered  to  take 
fresh-water  baths,  she  must,  like  a  child,  make  a  game 
of  it  all,  play  at  being  primitive,  and  rear  in  imagina- 
tion an  'American  hut'  on  the  banks  of  the  Liffey.^ 
She  flitted  eagerly  about  England  and  Ireland,  anxious 
to  know  everybody  and  see  everything.^  Mrs.  Carter 
found  her  like  Bartholomew  Cokes,  who  wanted  every 
plaything  in  the  Fair.^  Indeed,  the  world  must  have 
seemed  to  Mrs.  Vesey  a  vast  toyshop  with  endless 
opportunities  for  play,  for  she  could  amuse  herself  by 
planning  a  fete  chavipetre,^  or  by  inventing  a  new  tea- 
pot, lacking,  to  be  sure,  both  spout  and  handle,  but  of 
'a  beautiful  Etruscan  form.'^     Her  guests  never  knew 

1  Diary  1.  253. 

2  She  was  so  called   by  Mrs.  Delany  as  early  as  1751.     {Correspondence 
3.  21),  who  adds,  'The  spirits  of  the  air  protect  her.' 

^  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  1.  242. 
*Ib.l.  330. 
6/6.  1.  311. 

®  Mrs.  Carter  writes  her  (Series  of  Letters  4.  27),  'I  prevented  you  from 
carrying  me  to  every  place  you  had  ever  heard  of  in  England  or  Wales.' 

7  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  1.  335,  2.  355;  cf.  2.  109. 

8  Series  of  Letters  4.  120.  ^  lb.  4.  137. 


144  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

what  to  expect,  for  she  might  present  them  with  an 
atheist  philosopher  hot  from  the  salons  of  Paris  or  set 
them  to  cutting  out  Indian  figures  and  flowers,  to 
paste  on  her  dressing-room  windows  in  imitation  of 
painted  glass. ^  Dowagers  marvel  at  her,  and  lament 
that  oddities  are  become  the  fashion. ^ 

Her  parties  were  informal  to  the  point  of  becom- 
ing promiscuous.  Her  first  aim  was  to  get  together 
every  one  of  importance,^  literary,  political,  social,  and 
ecclesiastical,  to  keep  them  broken  up  into  small 
groups,  and  to  insist  on  uniting  those  of  different  tastes 
and  mood.  She  got  Walpole  side  by  side  with  Fanny 
Burney  ■*  (whom  he  liked  at  once),  and  again  side  by 
side  with  Sir  William  Jones  (whom  he  did  not).^  She 
tried  to  present  Dr.  Johnson  to  the  Abbe  Raynal,  and 
drew  from  the  Great  Moralist  an  immortal  refusal.^ 
She  was  apparently  even  ambitious  to  marry  Elizabeth 
Carter  to  Thomas  Gray.'^  Yet  withal  she  had  the 
rare   gift   of   self-obliteration.^     She   gave   herself    no 

^  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  3.  40.  *  lb.  5.  523. 

'  Hannah  More  writes  :  '  Tuesday  I  was  at  Mrs.  Vesey's  assembly  which 
was  too  full  to  be  very  pleasant.  She  dearly  loves  company ;  and  as  she  is 
connected  with  almost  everything  that  is  great  in  the  good  sense  of  the  word, 
she  is  always  sure  to  have  too  much.'  Roberts's  Memoirs  1.  278;  29  March 
1783. 

*  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  2.  214 ;   19  June  1783. 

^Letters  11.  170. 

" '  Madam,  I  have  read  his  book,  and  I  have  nothing  to  say  to  him.' 
Series  of  Letters  3.  228  note;  Johnsonian  Miscellanies  2.  12  note. 

7  Series  of  Letters  3.  255 ;   21  May  1765. 

'  '  She  seemed  rather  desirous  to  assemble  persons  of  celebrity  and  talents 
under  her  roof  or  at  her  table  than  assumed  or  pretended  to  form  one  of  the 


THE  LONDON  SALON  145 

airs.  She  was  by  nature  absent-minded,  and  she 
affected  to  be  more  distraite  than  she  actually  was. 
When  excitedly  denouncing  second  marriages  she 
could  quite  overlook  (or  seem  to  overlook)  the  fact  that 
she  herself  had  been  married  twice.  'Bless  me,  my 
dear !  I  had  quite  forgotten  it.'  Such  wit  was  but 
ill-understood  in  salons  which  had  never  before  wit- 
nessed the  spectacle  of  a  bluestocking  laughing  at 
herself.  There  is  an  Irish  whimsicality  about  her 
remarks.  When  ill,  she  could  declare  that  her  only 
happy  moment  in  fourteen  days  was  in  a  fainting  fit, 
or  again  that  she  was  in  dread  of  losing  seven  or  eight 
of  her  senses.^  'It's  a  very  disagreeable  thing,  I 
think,'  said  she  to  Mr.  Cambridge,  'when  one  has  just 
made  an  acquaintance  with  anybody,  and  likes  them, 
to  have  them  die,'  ^  a  sentiment  that  set  Fanny  Burney 
to  'grinning  irresistibly,'  and  filliping  the  macaroon 
crumbs  from  her  muff  to  hide  her  embarrassment. 
Mrs.  Vesey  somehow  contrived  to  make  even  her  deaf- 
ness a  source  of  amusement.  When  Lady  Spencer 
brought  her  some  silver  ears  to  use  instead  of  trumpets, 
she  promptly  tried  them  on  before  her  guests,  and 
greeted  George  Cambridge  with  one  of  them  still 
clinging  to  her  ear,  but  as  she  was  moving  away  from 

number  herself.'  Wraxall's  Historical  Memoirs  1.  103.  'Without  attempt- 
ing to  shine  herself  she  had  the  happy  secret  of  bringing  forward  talents  of 
every  kind,  and  of  difiFusing  over  the  society  the  gentleness  of  her  own 
character.'     Forbes's  Life  of  Beattie  1.  209  n. 

1  Letters  of  Mrs.  Carter  to  Mrs.  Montagu  1.  271  and  A  Series  of  Letters  3.  292. 

2  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  2.  234. 

L 


146  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

him  spilled  it  unaware.     Surely  this  bluestocking  is  a 
very  human  sort. 

Those  who  smiled  at  her  naivete  forgot  that  it 
was  a  quality  very  near  to  wisdom.  Her  conversation, 
and  perhaps  her  letters/  revealed  that  instinctive 
knowledge  of  the  human  heart  which  is  the  peculiar 
possession  of  extreme  innocence.  'Few  people,'  she 
said  to  Mrs.  Carter,^  who  quotes  her  words  with 
approval  —  the  imprimatur  of  common  sense  —  '  give 
themselves  time  to  be  friends ' ;  and  as  if  she  only  half 
understood  the  century  into  which  she  had  been  born, 
inquired  'why  the  head  is  always  so  suspicious  of  the 
heart.'  ^  The  wise  Carter,  whose  knowledge  was  so 
much  more  sophisticated,  can  but  honour  her  for  hav- 
ing the  simplicity  of  a  little  child,  though  she  would 
like  to  whip  her  for  having  its  imprudence.^  But  it 
was  this  very  simplicity  of  soul  that  enabled  the  good 
creature  to  'accommodate  herself  so  fully  to  the  awk- 
ward customs  and  manners  of  mere  actually  existing 
men  and  women.'  Mrs.  Carter  finds  it  'very  surpris- 
ing,' ^  as  does  the  student,  and  as  did  Montagu  and 

*  Her  letters,  with  the  exception  of  a  lively  but  rather  incoherent  note  to 
Hannah  More,  have  not  been  published.  Lord  Lyttelton  wrote  to  Garrick : 
'You  will  be  charmed  (as  I  am)  with  the  lively  colouring  and  fine  touches  in 
the  epistolary  style  of  our  sylph,  joined  to  the  most  perfect  ease.  Mrs. 
Montagu's  letters  are  superior  to  her  in  nothing  but  force  and  compass  of 
thought.'     Garrick,  Correspondence  1.  440;   12  October  1771. 

2  Series  of  Letters  4.  6. 

3  lb.  4.  83. 

*  lb.  4.  354. 

^  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  1.  335. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  147 

all  the  dowagers,  no  doubt;  but  Miss  Burney,  with 
her  keen  observation,  saw  at  once  that  her  skill  in 
selecting  guests  and  her  'address  in  rendering  them 
easy  with  one  another'  was  an  art  that  implied  'no 
mean  understanding.'  ^  She  had  sufficient  skill  to 
persuade  Horace  Walpole,  who  professed  to  hate  her 
'Babels,'  to  come  and  join  the  Cophthi,^  and  not  to 
snub  them  one  and  all ;  she  had  the  skill  to  keep  al- 
ways on  good  terms  with  Mrs,  Montagu ;  she  could 
attract  the  whole  Literary  Club  on  alternate  Tuesdays, 
and  filled  her  drawing-room  with  the  most  difficult 
people  in  England  to  manage.^  Yet  her  methods  were 
always  of  the  simplest,  her  collations  modest  though 
delicate,  and  her  house,  though  interesting  because 
of  its  oddity,  was  hardly  an  attraction  apart  from  its 
mistress. 

With  all  the  new  emotions  of  sentimentalism  and 
romanticism,  Mrs.  Vesey  was  in  full  sympathy,  and 
she  must  have  done  something  to  popularize  these 
movements  among  the  beaux  esprits  of  London.  She 
adored  the  Sentimental  Journey.     She  and  Mrs.  Carter 

^  Diary  1.  253-54. 

*  Letters  9.  152 ;  24  January  1775 :  'The  Cophthi  were  an  Egyptian  race, 
of  whom  nobody  knows  anything  but  the  learned ;  and  thence  I  gave  Mrs. 
Montagu's  academies  the  name  of  Coptic' 

'  Johnson,  Walpole,  Goldsmith,  Burke,  Reynolds,  Boswell,  Garrick, 
Steme,  General  Potemkin,  General  Paoli,  General  Oglethorpe,  half  a  dozen 
bishops,  and  all  the  blues  were  at  various  times  among  her  guests.  Of  one 
of  her  entertainments,  Hannah  More  wrote:  'She  had  collected  her  party 
from  the  Baltic  to  the  Po,  for  there  was  a  Russian  nobleman,  an  Italian 
virtuoso,  and  General  Paoli.'     Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  212. 


148  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

write  each  other  of  the  solemn  awe  of  storms  at  sea,  of 
'subHme  and  terrible'  Welsh  'prospects,'  ^  of  dim-lit 
Gothic  cloisters,  and  the  sad  note  of  the  owl  at  set  of 
sun.  She  loved  the  poetry  of  Gray,  and  even  tempted 
the  shy  poet  into  her  drawing-room. ^  She  was  obliged 
to  pass  much  of  her  time  in  Ireland,  and  on  her  journeys 
there  and  back  improved  the  opportunity  of  studying 
the  wild  scenery  of  Wales.  She  writes  to  Mrs.  Carter 
of  her  journey  through  Anglesey  and  over  Penmuen- 
maur.  The  story  thrilled  Mrs.  Carter,  for  she  wrote 
of  it  to  Mrs.  Montagu  : 

In  the  midst  of  her  passage  through  these  wild 
regions,  she  and  Mrs.  Hancock  ^  were  overtaken  by  a 
tempest  which  greatly  heightened  the  sublime  and 
terrible  of  the  scene;  and  you  may  guess  what  a  de- 
scription such  an  adventure  would  furnish  to  an  imagi- 
nation like  hers.^ 

Mrs.  Vesey,  moreover,  appears  to  have  been  alone 
among  the  blues  in  aspiring  to  the  easier  standards  of 
French  manners  and  to  the  new  'freedom  of  thought,' 
though  she  never  really  abandoned  herself  to  them. 
She  was  one  of  the  ladies  who  lent  diversity  to  the 
amatory  career  of  Laurence  Sterne ;  but  the  flirtation, 
though  feverish  enough  for  a  time,  either  escaped  the 
notice  of  Mrs.  Vesey's  precise  friends  or  was,  by  general 
consent,  hushed  up ;  for  it  expired  at  last  quite  harm- 

»  Series- of  Letters  3.  323.  ^  75.  3.  255. 

'Her  prosaic  sister-in-law,  whom  friends  called  'Body,'  as  they  called 
Vesey  'Mind.' 

*  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  1.  358. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  149 

lessly  and  left  only  a  handful  of  letters  as  proof  of  its 
former  vitality.  Yorick  and  this  earlier  'Eliza'  met, 
it  would  appear,  in  1762,  when  Sterne  was  at  the  height 
of  his  fame,  and  enjoying  the  pleasures  of  metropolitan 
life  for  a  season.  He  heard  Mrs.  Vesey  sing;  walked 
twenty  paces  beside  her ;  felt  the  '  harmonic  vibrations ' 
of  a  heart  truly  sentimental,  and  had  no  sooner  left 
her  than  he  opened  an  amatory  correspondence  with 
her.  He  would  give  one  of  his  cassocks  to  explain 
the  magic  of  her  personality :  '  I  believe  in  my  con- 
science, dear  lady,  if  truth  was  known,  that  you  have  no 
inside  at  all.  That  you  are  graceful,  elegant,  and 
desirable,  etc.,  etc.  —  every  common  beholder  who  can 
stare  at  you,  as  a  Dutch  boor  does  to  the  Queen  of 
Sheba,  —  can  easily  find  out  —  but  that  you  are  sensi- 
ble, gentle,  and  tender  and  from  one  end  to  the  other 
of  you  full  of  the  sweetest  tones  and  modulations  re- 
quire a  deeper  research.  —  You  are  a  system  of  har- 
monic vibrations  —  the  softest  and  best  attuned  of  all 
instruments.  —  Lord !  I  would  give  away  my  other 
cassock  to  touch  you.'  ^  Tristram  Shandy  protests 
that  his  head  is  turned. 

We  may  follow  them  to  Ranelagh,  where  they  saunter 
lackadaisically,  indifferent  to  the  crowd  and  the  fire- 
works, Mrs.  Vesey  uttering  'gentle,  amiable,  elegant 
sentiments  in  a  tone  of  voice  that  was  originally  in- 
tended for  a  Cherub.'  But  the  exposure  was  appar- 
ently too  much  for  the  tender  frame  of  Yorick.      In 

^  See  Melville's  Life  and  Letters  of  Sterne  2.  67  ff. 


150  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

listening  to  Mrs.  Vesey's  voice,  he  lost  his  own,  and 
now  '  colds,  coughs,  and  catarrhs '  have  so  tied  up  his 
tongue  that  he  can  no  longer  whisper  loud  enough  to 
explain  Vesey's  effect  upon  his  heart.  How  often 
thereafter  he  was  able  to  becassock  himself  and  sit  in 
the  warm  blue  drawing-room  listening  to  the  music, 
we  do  not  know.  The  romance  did  not  last  long, 
certainly ;  and  we  hear  nothing  more  of  it  after  the 
autumn  of  1767,  when  Mrs.  Vesey  invited  Sterne  to 
visit  her  in  Ireland,  an  invitation  which  his  illness 
compelled  him  to  decline. 

Like  the  French  ladies  described  by  Sterne  in  the 
Sentimental  Journey,  Mrs.  Vesey  turned,  at  a  certain 
age,  to  agnosticism.  Mrs.  Montagu  had  defied  Vol- 
taire, but  Mrs.  Vesey  courted  the  Abbe  Raynal.  He 
responded  with  great  vivacity  and  was  often  in  her 
drawing-room  during  the  year  1777.  Mrs.  Boscawen 
asserts  ^  that  she  once  heard  him  talk  for  eight  hours 

^  Life  of  Mrs.  Delany  5.  307.  Gibbon  wrote  of  Raynal  {Letters  2.  75 ; 
30  September  1783) :  'His  conversation  which  might  be  very  agreeable,  is 
intolerably  loud,  peremptory,  and  insolent ;  and  you  could  imagine  that  he 
alone  was  the  Monarch  and  legislator  of  the  World.'  Walpole,  who  met  him 
at  Baron  d'Holbach's,  was  so  bored  by  his  questions  that  he  pretended  to  be 
deaf.  'After  dinner  he  found  I  was  not,  and  never  forgave  me.'  Three 
years  later,  however,  he  dined  with  Walpole  at  Strawberry  Hill :  'The  Abbe 
Raynal  not  only  looked  at  nothing  himself,  but  kept  talking  to  the  Ambassa- 
dor the  whole  time,  and  would  not  let  him  see  anything  neither.  There 
never  was  such  an  impertinent  and  tiresome  old  gossip.  He  said  to  one  of 
the  Frenchmen,  we  ought  to  come  abroad  to  make  us  love  our  own  country. 
This  was  before  Mr.  Churchill,  who  replied  very  properly,  "Yes  we  had 
some  Esquimaux  here  lately,  and  they  liked  nothing  because  they  could  get 
no  train-oil  for  breakfast." '  Letters  9.  92 ;  12  November  1774,  and  10.  62 ; 
15  June  1777. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  151 

*  successfully  '  and  without  interruption:  'One  must 
have  heard  and  seen  it  to  believe  it;'  and  Mrs.  Chapone 
asserts  that  he  talked  steadily  from  one  at  noon  till  one 
in  the  morning.^  This  particular  conversation,  how- 
ever, did  not  occur  at  Mrs.  Vesey's.  She  would  never 
have  permitted  any  one  thus  to  turn  conversation  into 
a  lecture. 

Mrs.  Vesey's  interest  in  French  agnosticism  caused 
her  friends  grave  concern.  Twice  Mrs.  Carter  de- 
nounced Voltaire  when  Mrs.  Vesey  demanded  a  pro- 
nouncement on  his  works,  and  at  last  wrote  that  she 
would  as  soon  think  of  playing  with  toads  and  vipers, 
as  of  reading  such  blasphemy  and  impiety.^  She 
argued  for  the  validity  of  revealed  religion,  but  without 
great  effect,  for  Mrs.  Vesey  continued  to  play  with 
fire.  She  produced  strange  romantic  thrills  in  herself 
by  reading  the  Abbe  Raynal  during  a  violent  thunder- 
storm. Byron,  surely,  could  have  understood  this,  but 
it  was  beyond  the  blues.  "Tis  a  dangerous  amusement 
to  a  mind  like  yours,  indeed  to  any  mind,'  wrote  Mrs. 
Carter.  But  dangerous  or  not,  it  illustrates  the  curiosity 
of  Mrs.  Vesey's  mind,  and  might  furnish  a  historian 
of   the   Romantic   Movement  with   an   apt   anecdote. 

^  Posthimous  Works  1.  174.  'In  the  hour  and  half  I  was  in  his  company, 
he  uttered  as  much  as  would  have  made  him  an  agreeable  companion  for  a 
week,  had  he  allotted  time  for  answers.' 

2  Series  of  Letters  4.  113;  cf.  3.  228  and  4.  108.  It  would  appear  that 
Mrs.  Montagu  feared  that  Mrs.  Vesey  was  about  to  adopt  certain  of  Rous- 
seau's 'absurdities.'  Cf.  Letters  of  Mrs.  Carter  to  Mrs.  Montagu  3.  241; 
24  June  1785. 


152  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Because  of  the  unpretentiousness  of  her  character, 
Mrs.  Vesey  has  always  been  ranked  far  below  Mrs. 
Montagu,  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  estimate 
is  quite  fair.  There  were  many  who  found  her  assem- 
blies more  agreeable  ^  than  Mrs.  Montagu's  more  pre- 
tentious parties,  especially  after  that  lady's  removal  to 
Portman  Square.  Unlike  Mrs.  Montagu,  she  made  no 
attempt  to  produce  literature  herself  (and  for  this 
posterity  should  be  grateful) ;  but  she  appears  to  have 
had  an  instinctive  appreciation,  not  surpassed  by  the 
other,  of  the  true  function  of  the  salon.  For  it  was 
the  office  of  the  bluestockings  neither  to  reform  the 
whole  of  London  society  by  giving  it  a  literary  tone, 
nor  to  bring  into  existence  a  new  school  of  authors 
dominated  by  their  ideals ;  but  rather  to  keep  in 
motion,  by  means  of  social  intercourse,  the  currents  of 
thought,  literary  and  philosophical.  A  true  conver- 
sazione can  create  and  vitalize  a  train  of  ideas,  and  Mrs. 
Vesey,  with  her  broad  and  genial  interests,  was  able  to 
assemble  the  best  representatives  of  the  new  ideas,  and 
bring  them  into  contact  with  society.  This,  if  there 
be  any,  is  the  true  office  of  the  bluestocking,  an  office 
which  Mrs.  Vesey  discharged  with  skill  and  with  charm. 

About  Mrs.  Montagu  and  Mrs.  Vesey  there  revolved 
other  luminaries.     Certain  of  them  —  Elizabeth  Carter, 

1  Hartley  writes  to  W.  W.  Pepys  (20  August  1800),  'Mrs.  Vesey's  .  .  . 
was  indeed  the  most  agreeable  house  for  conversation.'  Gaussen's  A  Later 
Pepys  2.  154. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  153 

Hester  Chapone,  Hannah  More,  and  Fanny  Burney  — 
though  they  presided  over  no  salon,  achieved  an  inde- 
pendent reputation  as  authors,  and  will  therefore  be 
considered  in  later  chapters.  Others  of  them  —  as 
Miss  Monckton  (still  remembered  for  Reynolds's 
sentimental  portrait  of  her).  Lady  Lucan,  Lady  Herries, 
Mrs.  Greville,  the  admirable  Mrs.  Cholmondeley 
(niece  of  Walpole  and  friend  of  Miss  Burney),  and  the 
sensible  Mrs.  Walsingham  —  have  left,  in  general, 
little  more  than  a  name  (and  an  adjective)  to  posterity. 
Others,  who  are  more  often  encountered,  demand  a 
brief  consideration. 

There  is,  for  example,  the  gracious  figure  of  Mrs. 
Boscawen,!  wife  of  the  Admiral,  and  one  of  the  best- 
loved  women  in  London.  Boswell's  compliment  to 
her  will  be  familiar  to  students  of  the  Life  of  Johnson: 
*  If  it  be  not  presumptuous  in  me  to  praise  her,  I  would 
say  that  her  manners  are  the  most  agreeable  and  her 
conversation  the  best  of  any  lady  with  whom  I  ever 
had  the  happiness  to  be  acquainted.' ^  Miss  More  de- 
scribed her  parties  in  the  words  of  Madame  de  Sevigne 
as  'all  daffodil,  all  rose,  all  jonquil,'  and  dwelt  on  her 
power  to  make  each  of  her  guests  feel  that  he  had 
been  the  inmediate  object  of  her  attention.^ 

Her  reputation  was  thus  always  rather  social  than 

1  Frances  Glanville  Boscawen  (1719  P-1805)  was  the  wife  of  the  Hon. 
Edward  Boscawen,  Admiral  (d.  1761),  and  mother  of  Viscount  Falmouth 
and  the  Duchess  of  Beaufort. 

2  3.  331.  3  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  182 ;  93. 


154  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

literary.^  Her  letters,  indeed,  were  highly  regarded 
by  her  friends,  and  were  sometimes  preferred  to  Mrs. 
Montagu's  —  a  preference  by  no  means  audacious. 
The  repeated  comparison  with  Madame  de  Sevigne  is 
certainly  less  happy.  Mrs.  Boscawen's  letters,  as  pre- 
served in  Mrs.  Delany's  Autobiography  and  the  Me- 
moirs of  Hannah  More,  have  the  affectionate  intimacy 
but  not  the  kindling  wit  and  sprightliness  which  dis- 
tinguish familiar  correspondence  at  its  best.  It  is 
sufficient  to  say  of  these  letters  that  they  have  suc- 
cessfully preserved  Mrs.  Boscawen's  pleasant  person- 
ality. 

Mrs.  Boscawen  emulated  Mrs.  Montagu  as  a  patron 
of  rising  young  authors  by  entering  into  warm  personal 
relations  with  Hannah  More.  They  first  became  inti- 
mate when,  on  the  twelfth  night  of  Percy,  Mrs.  Bos- 
cawen sent  the  successful  dramatist  a  wreath  of  myrtle, 
laurel,  and  bay.  This  stimulated  the  young  lady  to 
an  exhibition  of  that  flattery  for  which  she  was  already 
famous.     In  an  Ode  to  the  Hon.  Mrs.  Boscawen,  Apollo 

^  She  did,  however,  give  some  assistance  to  Johnson  in  the  Lives  of  the 
Poets.  'I  have  claims,'  she  writes  to  Miss  More  (Roberts's  Memoirs  of 
More  1.  191),  'upon  Dr.  Johnson,  but  as  he  never  knows  me  when  he  meets 
me,  they  are  all  stifled  in  the  cradle ;  for  he  must  know  who  I  am  before  he 
can  remember  that  I  got  him  Mr.  Spence's  manuscripts.'  These  papers 
were  of  great  use  to  Johnson,  as  he  himself  remarks  {Lives  1.  xxvii,  ed.  Hill). 
Boswell  regrets  {Life  4.  63)  that  Johnson  did  not  make  a  more  handsome 
acknowledgment ;  but  Boswell  seems  to  have  been  unaware  of  Mrs.  Bos- 
cawen's connection  with  the  whole  transaction.  Mrs.  Boscawen  cannot  be 
serious  in  what  she  writes  of  Johnson's  ignorance  of  her.  A  conversation 
with  Johnson,  in  which  she  took  part,  is  described  in  the  Life  (4.  98). 


THE  LONDON  SALON  155 

himself  is  made  to  rebuke  Hannah  for  wearing  these 
floral  honours,  asserting  that  it  is  for  Mrs.  Boscawen 
that 

the  faithful  myrtle  blooms. 

For  her  the  sage's  bay. 
And  even  thou  shalt  claim  a  name 

And  challenge  some  renown  ; 
Boscawen's  friendship  is  thy  fame, 

Her  praise  thy  Laurel  Crown. ^ 

But  the  two  ladies  had  only  begun  their  career  of  com- 
pliment. Somewhat  later  Miss  More  sent  to  her  patron 
a  bottle  of  'otto  of  roses,'  having  learned  that  that 
lady's  organs  'partake  the  refinement  that  graces  her 
mind.'  This  is  not  the  first  instance  we  have  encoun- 
tered of  the  use  of  incense  in  the  bluestocking  ritual. 
Mrs.  Boscawen  sometimes  varied  her  flowery  wreaths 
of  praise  with  gifts  and  practical  suggestions.  When 
she  learns  that  Miss  More  has  been  reading  Homer  and 
Tasso,  she  at  once  becomes  ambitious  for  an  English 
epic  from  the  pen  of  a  woman.  'Some  spark,'  she 
thinks,  from  these  older  geniuses,  'will  communicate 
to  that  train  of  poetic  fire,  qui  vous  appartient,  and  the 
explosion  will  ascend  in  many  a  brilliant  star.'  ^  The 
honourable  lady  demands  and  obtains  an  Ode  on  the 
Marquess  of  Worcester's  Birthday,  into  which  the  author 
had  the  sense  to  weave  a  compliment  to  Mrs.  Boscawen 
and  to  'Glanvilla,'  her  estate.^     Meanwhile  the  patron 

^  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  129. 
2  lb.  1.  179. 
3/6.  1.  192. 


156  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

is  weeping  her  eyes  red  over  Percy,  circulating  copies 
of  Miss  More's  Essays,  eliciting  praises  from  friends 
and  beaux  esprits  —  all  duly  forwarded  —  and  rebuk- 
ing, very  gently,  the  rising  authoress  for  not  proclaim- 
ing more  loudly  the  greatness  of  the  sex :  '  where  shall 
we  find  a  champion  if  you  (armed  at  all  points)  desert 
us?'i 

Miss  More's  chief  tribute  to  Mrs.  Boscawen,  however, 
was  her  poem.  Sensibility,  published  in  1782,  in  the 
form  of  an  epistle  to  that  lady.  In  rapturous  verse 
Sensibility  is  hailed  as  the  parent  of  charity,  charm,  and 
many  other  bluestocking  virtues ;  but,  above  all,  'tis 
this  that  'gives  Boscawen  half  her  power  to  please.' 
As  the  poem  furnishes  the  most  convenient  statement 
of  Mrs.  Boscawen's  connection  with  the  group  of  ladies 
we  are  studying,  a  rather  long  extract  from  it  must  be 
given : 

Accept,  Boscawen  !  these  unpolish'd  lays, 
Nor  blame  too  mucli  the  verse  you  cannot  praise. 
For  you  far  other  bards  have  wak'd  the  string, 
Far  other  bards  for  you  were  wont  to  sing.* 

^  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  190. 

*  Mrs.  Boscawen  was  the  subject  of  more  than  one  literary  tribute  before 
this.  Young's  dreary  ode.  Resignation,  was  addressed  to  her,  on  the  death 
of  Admiral  Boscawen ;  Mrs.  Montagu  had  taken  the  widow  to  the  ancient 
poet  for  consolation.  In  this  poem  she  is  bidden  to  '  go  forth  a  moral  Amazon, 
armed  with  undaunted  thought.'  Perhaps  the  last  of  these  poetical  tributes 
was  a  sonnet  (from  which  a  selection  is  here  printed  for  the  first  time),  by 
Pye  when  poet  laureate.  Writing  of  her  villa  at  Richmond,  once  the  home 
of  Thomson,  the  poet  Pye  says : 

Still  Fancy's  Train  your  verdant  Paths  shall  trace. 
The'  closed  her  fav'rite  Votary's  dulcet  lay ; 


Hannah  More 

From  Finden's  engraving  of  the  portrait  by  Opie  (1786) 


THE  LONDON  SALON  157 

Yet  on  the  gale  their  parting  music  steals, 

Yet  your  charm'd  ear  the  loved  impression  feels ; 

You  heard  the  lyre  of  Littleton  and  Young, 

And  this  a  Grace  and  that  a  Seraph  strung.  .  .  , 

Yes,  still  for  you  your  gentle  stars  dispense 

The  charm  of  friendship  and  the  feast  of  sense : 

Yours  is  the  bliss,  and  Heav'n  no  dearer  sends. 

To  call  the  wisest,  brightest,  best  your  friends. 

And  while  to  these  I  raise  the  votive  line, 

O  let  me  grateful  own  these  friends  are  mine : 

With  Carter  trace  the  wit  to  Athens  known, 

Or  view  in  Montagu  that  wit  our  own. 

Or  mark,  well  pleased  Chapone's  instructive  page 

Intent  to  raise  the  morals  of  the  age ; 

Or  boast,  in  Walsingham,  the  various  power 

To  cheer  the  lonely,  grace  the  letter'd  hour. 

Somewhat  too  much  of  this. 

The  story  continues  in  the  same  strain  till  long  after 
the  publication  of  Miss  More's  Florio  in  1786.  It  is 
only  necessary  to  add  that  it  is  to  Mrs.  Boscawen  that 
we  owe  the  painting  of  Opie's  delightful  portrait  of  Miss 
More.^     It  does  more  to  perpetuate  the  charm  of  the 

Each  wonted  Haunt  their  footsteps  still  shall  grace. 
Still  Genius  thro'  your  green  Retreats  shall  stray ; 
For,  from  the  Scene  Boscawen  loves  to  grace, 
Th'  Attendant  Muse  shall  ne'er  be  long  away. 

Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MS.  27578. 
1  Mrs.  Boscawen  chose  Opie  to  paint  the  portrait,  though  the  subject,  she 
writes  (Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  2.  35), '  is  worthy  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's 
superior  skill ;  but  I  can  command  Opie,  and  make  him  alter,  or  even  re- 
faire  if  we  do  not  like  it.'  In  her  reply,  Miss  More  stated  that  nothing  could 
overcome  her  natural  repugnance  to  having  her  portrait  taken,  but  Mrs. 
Boscawen's  wishes  which  are  to  her  'such  indisputable  commands.*  The 
portrait,  which  was  hung  in  Mrs.  Boscawen's  dining-room,  became  so  popu- 
lar that  both  Walpole  and  Mrs.  Walsingham  wished  copies  of  it. 


158  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

bluestocking  ladies  than  all  their  congratulatory  epistles 
—  in  prose  or  verse. 

Mrs.  Ord  ^  has  by  modern  writers  frequently  been 
associated  with  Mrs.  Montagu  and  Mrs.  Vesey  as 
originating  the  bluestocking  conversazioni.^  Just  why 
Mrs.  Ord  should  have  been  chosen  to  complete  the  triad 
of  ladies  it  is  difficult  to  say.  She  is  not  mentioned  in 
Miss  More's  Bas  Bleu,  in  Dr.  Burney's  verses,  or  in 
Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson.  Her  name  occurs  but  once, 
and  quite  casually,  in  Walpole's  Letters;  and  Johnson 
writes  but  once  ^  of  having  been  present  at  her  assembly. 
Even  those  who  describe  her  parties  speak  rather  of  her 
guests  than  of  herself,  and  praise  her  good  nature  with- 
out mentioning  her  conversation.^  Her  talk  was,  it 
appears,  considered  heavy,  so  that  Miss  Burney  her- 
self was  obliged  to  admit  that  it  lacked  both  mirth  and 
instruction,  and  that  she  loved  Mrs.  Ord  for  her  friend- 
liness but  not  for  her  brilliancy. 

Nevertheless  Mrs.  Ord  was  one  who  early  made  the 
experiment  of  banishing  cards  and  dancing  from  her 

1  Anne  Dillingham  Ord  (d.  1808)  was  the  widow  of  William  Ord  (d. 
1766),  who  had  been  High  Sheriff  of  Northumberland  in  1747.  She  is  often 
spoken  of  as  '  Mrs.  Ord  of  Queen  Anne  Street.' 

2  Notably  Doran,  Lady  of  the  Last  Century,  p.  264,  and  the  New  English 
Dictionary,  under  'Bluestocking.' 

3  Letters  2.  146 ;   cf .  149. 

*  Hannah  More  and  Fanny  Burney,  e.g.  Rev.  Montagu  Pennington 
(Carter's  Letters  to  Montagu  3. 199  n.)  speaks  of  her  as  one  '  of  whom  too  much 
good  can  hardly  be  said,  and  of  whom  the  editor  believes  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  say  any  ill.' 


THE  LONDON  SALON  159 

evening  parties  and  substituting  undisturbed  conversa- 
tion as  the  staple  of  her  entertainment.  Like  Mrs. 
Vesey  she  abhorred  formality,  and  made  her  guests 
draw  their  chairs  about  a  large  table  in  the  middle  of 
the  room,  remarking  —  and  it  is  one  of  the  few  remarks 
of  hers  that  has  been  preserved  —  that  a  table  was  the 
'best  friend  to  sociable  conversation.'  ^  Here,  appar- 
ently, she  succeeded  in  getting  the  unity  without  the 
hard  formality  of  the  dreaded  circle.^ 

She  had,  moreover,  a  skill  in  the  choice  of  her  guests 
which  usually  saved  her  from  the  charge  of  assembling 
crowds  indiscriminately.^  Pepys  and  Dr.  Burney  unite 
in  praising  her  ability  to  mix  her  ingredients,  and  for 
this  the  latter  pronounces  her  an  excellent  cook.  Miss 
More  liked  her  assemblies  because  there  she  could  have 
Sir  Joshua  and  Mr.  Cambridge  all  to  herself  ^  or  discuss 
the  relative  merits  of  Pope  and  Dryden,  sitting  apart 
with  Mrs.  Montagu  and  Horace  Walpole.^ 

Perhaps  Mrs.  Ord  wished  to  take  the  place  of  Mrs. 
Thrale  as  the  social  patron  of  Fanny  Burney.  She  it 
was  who  conducted  Fanny  to  her  royal  prison  at 
Windsor,^  who  helped  to  keep  her  in  touch  with  her 

^  Early  Diary  of  Frances  Burney  2.  138. 

2  See  p.  139. 

'  Not  invariably,  however,  for  Hannah  More  once  found  such  a  crowd 
that  she  thought  herself  well  off  to  be  '  wedged  in  with  Mr.  Smelt,  Langton, 
Ramsay,  and  Johnson.'     Roberts's  Memoirs  1.  174;   1780. 

*  lb.  1.  274 ;  7  March  1783. 

6/6.  1.317;   1784. 

®  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  2.  378. 


160  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

old  friends,  1  who  showered  gifts  upon  her  and  carried 
her  to  oratorios,  and  who,  when  the  young  woman  was 
worn  out  by  her  servitude,  put  the  map  of  England  into 
the  hands  of  'her  child,'  and  bade  her  choose  the 
journey  she  would  take.  This  trip,  which  was  through 
southwest  England,  lasted  many  weeks,  and  it  was 
mid-September  before  the  two  finally  drove  out  of 
Bath  towards  London  in  Mrs.  Ord's  coach-and-four.^ 
Nor  did  the  services  of  this  'excellent  and  maternal' 
creature  stop  with  this,  for  the  very  next  year  she 
carried  Miss  Burney  to  the  'salubrious  hills  of  Norbury,' 
and  there  administered  what  the  Diarist,  in  a  flight  of 
rhetoric  worthy  of  her  latest  years,  called  'the  balsamic 
medicine  of  social  tenderness.'  ^  But  nothing  came  of 
this  patronage  in  the  way  of  literature,  so  that  Mrs. 
Ord's  kindness,  though  challenging  our  admiration, 
adds  little  to  the  movement  we  are  tracing. 

Another  woman  closely  associated  with  Miss  Burney, 
and  one  who  profoundly  influenced  her  life,  was  that 
venerable  relic  of    the  former    age,   Mary   Granville 

*  She  once  mustered  the  whole  tribe  of  blues  that  Fanny  might  show  her 
old  friends  that  a  sojourn  at  Court  had  not  made  her  forget  them.  On  this 
occasion  the  gathering  was  exceptionally  brilliant,  and  included  Mrs.  Mon- 
tagu, Mrs.  Carter,  Mrs.  Boscawen,  Mrs.  Chapone,  Mrs.  Garrick,  Reynolds, 
Langton,  and  Horace  Walpole.  At  this  assembly  Miss  Burney  says  that 
she  shall  be  'proud  to  show  everybody  the  just  first  place  she  [Mrs.  Ord] 
holds  with  me,  among  all  that  set.'  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arhlay  3.  357  (3 
January  1788). 

2  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  5.  33 ;   1791. 

3  lb.  5.  68. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  161 

Delany,  whom  Burke  called  'not  only  the  woman  of 
fashion  of  the  present  age,  but  .  .  .  the  highest  bred 
woman  in  the  world.'  ^  'Swift's  Mrs.  Delany,'  they 
loved  to  call  her,  for  she  had  known  the  great  Dean 
in  his  latter  days.  Of  the  relationship,  such  as  it  was, 
she  never  tired  of  talking,  and  in  this  she  was  wise,  for  it 
was  her  chief  claim  to  distinction  in  literary  circles. 
The  woman  who  could  display  a  sheaf  of  private  letters 
from  Swift  and  to  whom  the  Spectator  was  'almost 
too  modern  to  speak  of  ^  was  of  course  worshipped 
by  every  bluestocking  in  London ;  but  she  was  never 
quite  a  blue  herself.  She  did  not  wish  to  be.  Miss 
More,  it  is  true,  claims  her  as  one  of  the  circle  in  her 
poem  Sensibility : 

Delany  too  is  ours ;  serenely  bright, 
Wisdom's  strong  ray,  and  virtue's  milder  light : 
And  she  who  blessed  the  friend  and  graced  the  lays 
Of  poignant  Swift,  still  gilds  my  social  days ; 
Long,  long  protract  thy  light,  O  star  benign ! 
Whose  setting  beams  with  milder  lustre  shine. 

But  Mrs.  Delany  seldom  allowed  her  lustre  to  shine 
upon  the  salon,  and  was  anything  but  mild  in  her 
opinion  of  Mrs.  Montagu's  assemblies.  She  was  more 
interested  in  the  Royal  Family  than  in  the  progress  of 
literature,  and  despite  her  early  associations,  preferred 
the  society  of  rank  to  that  of  genius.  She  was  gra- 
ciously pleased  when  Garrick  received  her  friend  the 

^  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  5.  12  n. 
*  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  285  and  1.  92. 
M 


162  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Duchess  of  Portland  and  herself  ^very  respectfully,* 
and  showed  himself  'sensible  of  the  honour'  done 
him.'  She  was  vexed  that  Mason's  tepid  tragedy, 
Elfrida,  should  be '  prostituted '  by  a  public  performance, 
and  'the  charms  of  virgins  represented  by  the  aban- 
doned nymphs  of  Drury  Lane.'  'Such  a  poem,'  she 
continues,  'would  have  been  represented  in  days  of 
yore  by  the  youthful  part  of  the  Royal  family  or  those 
of  the  first  rank.  Indeed,  in  these  our  days  {save  our 
own  Royal  Family),  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  repre- 
sentatives suited  to  such  virtuous  and  refined  charac- 
ters.' ^  Such  a  person,  who  was  for  ever  protesting 
that  she  was  in  love  with  the  King,  the  Queen,  and  the 
whole  Royal  Family,^  was  in  no  position  to  mediate 
properly  between  authors  and  'the  Great.'  Her  one 
conception  of  serving  them  was  to  render  them  up,  a 
living  sacrifice,  to  the  Royal  Family,  as  Miss  Burney 
(who  was  dazzled  by  the  friend  of  Swift  and  the  friend 
of  the  Queen)  discovered  to  her  cost.  When  Miss 
Burney  hesitated  to  enter  upon  her  service  as  Dresser 
to  Queen  Charlotte  —  a  post  which  her  intimacy  with 
Mrs.  Delany  had  brought  her  —  it  was  Mrs.  Delany 
who  was  'much  mortified'  that  so  flattering  a  pro- 
posal could  cause  a  moment's  hesitation.^ 

Mrs.  Delany  is  a  significant  figure  in  the  history  of 

1  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  4.  283 ;   1770. 

2  lb.  4.  489 ;  30  December  1772. 

3  lb.  5.  374. 

*  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  2.  364. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  163 

the  salon  by  virtue  of  the  fascination  which  she  exer- 
cised through  her  quondam  connection  with  a  great 
man;  but  of  genuine  interest  in  the  salon  she  had 
little,  and  of  influence  upon  the  course  of  literature 
none  at  all. 

Alone  among  the  literary  ladies  of  the  age,  Mrs. 
Thrale  has  retained  the  fascination  which  she  exercised 
in  her  own  time.  The  fame  of  the  other  bluestockings 
has  gone  from  less  to  less ;  but  hers  has  remained 
constant,  if  indeed  it  has  not  increased.  This  is  of 
significance,  for  it  shows  either  that  she  was  more 
modern  than  her  sisters  or  more  universal.  She  might 
consistently  have  aspired  to  the  title,  'Queen  of  the 
Bluestockings,'  but  she  did  not  even  care  whether  she 
was  reckoned  one  of  them,  contenting  herself  with 
outwitting  them  at  every  point.  It  was  she,  for  exam- 
ple, who  captured  the  two  authors  most  coveted  by  the 
mistresses  of  the  salons,  Johnson  and  Miss  Burne^^  and 
*  planted'  them  in  her  house.  ^  Her  friendship  with 
the  former,  though  it  cannot  be  shown  to  have  altered 
the  course  of  his  works,  gave  birth  to  an  admirable 
series  of  familiar  letters,  which  Hannah  More  found 
*true  letters  of  friendship  which  are  meant  to  show 
kindness  rather  than  wit.'  ^     But  more  important  than 

^  A  newspaper  announced  that '  Miss  Burney,  the  sprightly  writer  of  the 
elegant  novel  Evelina,  is  now  domesticated  with  Mrs.  Thrale,  in  the  same 
manner  that  Miss  More  is  with  Mrs.  Garrick,  and  Mrs.  Carter  with  Mrs. 
Montagu.'     Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  1.  492;   May  1781. 

^  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  2.  100. 


164  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

such  published  results  was  the  fame  which  Johnson 
lent  to  Mrs.  Thrale  by  his  residence  at  her  home. 
The  nearest  approach  to  the  true  salon  that  we  find  in 
the  eighteenth  century  in  England  is  the  dining-room 
at  Streatham ;  the  spectacle  of  Johnson  there  reading 
aloud  from  the  proof-sheets  of  the  Lives  of  the  Poets  is  in 
exact  accord  with  the  best  French  traditions  of  the  salon. 

In  many  other  respects  Mrs.  Thrale  showed  that  she 
was  capable  of  fulfilling  the  more  important  functions 
of  a  literary  hostess.  It  was  she  who  attempted  to 
direct  the  genius  of  Fanny  Burney  towards  the  theatre, 
prevailing  upon  her  to  write  a  comedy.  It  is  true  that 
the  resulting  play.  The  Witlings,  was  not  thought  by 
Dr.  Burney  a  fit  successor  to  Evelina,  and  was  accord- 
ingly destroyed ;  but  in  the  absence  of  any  proof  to 
the  contrary  and  in  view  of  the  influence  which  Mrs. 
Thrale  could  bring  to  bear  in  the  theatrical  world 
through  Murphy  and  others,  it  is  diflBcult  to  see  why 
her  advice  to  the  young  writer  was  not  sound.  Sheri- 
dan, than  whom  there  was  no  better  judge,  gave  similar 
counsel. 

Finally,  when,  after  her  marriage  and  departure  from 
England,  as  Mrs.  Piozzi,  she  printed  her  Anecdotes  of  the 
Late  Samuel  Johnson,  the  value  of  what  she  had  to  tell 
and  her  vivacity  in  telling  it  enabled  her  to  triumph  over 
a  slipshod  style  and  an  inaccurate  method,  and  to 
establish,  once  for  all,  her  reputation  in  the  literary 
world,  a  reputation  which  the  bluestockings  were 
foolish  enough  to  think  she  had  lost  for  ever. 


THE  LONDON  SALON  165 

There  is  no  need  here  to  discuss  the  anomalies  of 
Mrs,  Thrale's  character.  They  have  been  dwelt  on 
unnecessarily  and  fruitlessly.  She  had  no  illusions 
about  her  friends,  and  least  of  all  about  her  own  im- 
portance. She  looked  out  on  the  world  in  which  she 
moved,  shrewdly  and,  on  the  whole,  sanely.  She  knew 
how  to  make  people  happy  and  how  to  put  the  Great 
at  their  ease.  'Mrs.  Thrale,'  says  Mr.  Seccombe, 
'moved  among  them  serene,  lively,  "a  pretty  woman 
still,"  an  exorciser  of  melancholy,  the  cheeriest  of 
hostesses,  quite  unconscious  of  erudition,  gaily  spon- 
taneous, the  queen  of  Streatham.  Her  wayward 
naturalness  made  her  seem  a  rose  among  hot-house 
flowers.  Her  innate  brightness  enabled  her,  as  has 
been  said,  to  romp  with  learning  and  to  play  blind  man's 
buff  with  the  sages.'  In  the  somewhat  stifling  atmos- 
phere of  salons  such  a  personality  is  of  the  very  highest 
worth. 


CHAPTER  IX 

Bluestockings  as  Authors 

Much  mischief  to  the  cause  of  criticism  is  wrought 
by  the  speciahsts.  Investigators  in  the  underworld  of 
forgotten  books,  to  which  scholarly  competition  too 
frequently  drives  them,  often  become  so  accustomed  to 
the  darkness  about  them  that  they  mistake  a  glimmer 
for  the  glorious  light  of  the  upper  world,  and  hasten  to 
inform  an  inattentive  public  that  the  dim  by-ways  and 
dark  corners  of  the  realm  of  dead  authors  are  by  no 
means  lacking  in  brilliancy.  But  such  assertions  serve 
rather  to  darken  counsel  than  to  illuminate  the  world. 
Enthusiasm  for  a  subject  sometimes  coexists  with  a 
state  of  delusion  about  it.  It  ought  to  be  possible  to 
discover  that  a  forgotten  book  is  readable  without  try- 
ing to  convince  the  public  that  an  acquaintance  with 
it  is  indispensable  to  all  who  pretend  to  culture. 

The  works  of  the  bluestockings  have  all  long  since 
sunk  into  this  oblivion.  The  benevolent  reader  of 
them  has  the  feeling  which  Dante  experienced  so 
strongly  when  he  met  in  hell  the  souls  who  had  once 
been  famous  in  a  brighter  world.  These  books  seem 
to  appeal  to  the  reader  to  reestablish  something  of  their 
former  fame,  even  though  this,  in  its  turn,  prove  to  be 

166 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  167 

but  transitory.  Who  now  reads  Montagu  ?  To  many 
the  question  itself  will  be  unintelligible;  or  will  be 
taken  to  refer  to  another;  yet  in  1770  all  the  world 
was  reading  her.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  as  a 
critic  she  was  esteemed  almost  as  highly  as  Johnson 
himself.  She  was  known  as  the  woman  who  had  dared 
to  challenge  comparison  with  Lucian,  as  the  defender 
and  even  as  the  '  patroness '  of  Shakespeare ;  she  was 
an  Eve  in  the  world  of  critics,  an  armed  Athena  who 
had  set  her  foot  on  the  head  of  the  serpent  Voltaire. 

Mrs.  Montagu's  career  as  a  writer  began  with  the 
composition  of  three  dialogues  which  were  added  to 
Lord  Lyttelton's  Dialogues  of  the  Dead  when  they 
appeared  in  1760.  The  works  were  anonymous;  but 
the  news  that  they  were  by  Mrs.  Montagu  was  soon 
spread  abroad.  Many  had  no  doubt  inferred  her 
authorship  already  from  the  enthusiastic  words  in 
which  the  noble  lord  spoke  of  her:  'I  shall  think,'  he 
says,  '  the  Public  owes  me  a  great  Obligation  for  having 
excited  a  Genius  so  capable  of  uniting  Delight  with 
Instruction,  and  giving  to  Knowledge  and  Virtue  those 
Graces  which  the  Wit  of  the  Age  has  too  often  employed 
all  its  skill  to  bestow  upon  Folly  and  Vice.'  The  public 
did  not  disappoint  the  peer.  Five  editions  were  called 
for  before  1768. 

Mrs.  Montagu's  dialogues  might  easily  be  dismissed 
by  saying  that  they  do  not  reach  the  level  of  Lyttelton's. 
But  if  it  be  required  to  detect  grades  of  value  in  work 
so  uniformly  flat,  we  may  say  that  the  dialogue  between 


168  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Mercury  and  a  Modern  Fine  Lady  is  the  best,  as  that 
between  Hercules  and  Cadmus  is  the  worst.  They 
are  all  well  called  Dialogues  of  the  Dead,  for  despite 
all  their  inflation,  they  never  once  betray  any  sem- 
blance of  vitality.  Of  characterization  they  are  wholly 
innocent,  but  not  of  profundity.  Cadmus,  for  exam- 
ple, gives  utterance  to  this :  '  The  genuine  glory,  the 
proper  distinction  of  the  rational  Species,  arises  from 
the  perfection  of  the  mental  powers.  Courage  is  apt 
to  be  fierce,  and  Strength  is  often  exerted  in  acts  of 
Oppression.  But  Wisdom  is  the  Associate  of  Justice ; 
It  assists  her  to  form  equal  Laws,  to  pursue  right 
measures,  to  correct  power,  protect  weakness,  and  to 
unite  individuals  in  a  common  Interest  and  general 
Welfare.'  It  is  amazing  the  amount  of  such  platitu- 
dinizing  which  the  eighteenth  century  consumed  with 
relish.  It  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  that  marvellous  era. 
The  style  derived  its  popularity  in  part  from  Johnson, 
who  himself  achieved  a  bare  victory  over  its  deadliness 
by  the  vivacity  of  his  intellect. 

In  the  dialogue  between  Mercury  and  Mrs.  Modish, 
the  author  was  at  once  less  pretentious  and  in  closer 
touch  with  her  subject.  Yet  even  here  her  desire  to 
give  instruction  triumphs  over  any  temptation  to 
depict  human  nature.  Mrs.  Modish,  the  frivolous 
butterfly,  explains  the  phrase  bon  ton  quite  as  seriously 
as  Mrs.  Carter  the  bluestocking  would  have  done : 
'It  is  —  I  can  never  tell  you  what  it  is ;  but  I  will  try 
to  tell  you  what  it  is  not.     In  conversation  it  is  not 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  169 

Wit ;  in  manners  it  is  not  Politeness ;  in  behaviour  it  is 
not  Address ;  but  it  is  a  little  like  them  all.  It  can 
only  belong  to  people  of  a  certain  rank,  who  live  in  a 
certain  manner,  with  certain  persons  who  have  not 
certain  virtues  and  who  have  certain  Vices,  and  who 
inhabit  a  certain  Part  of  the  Town.'  This  is  perhaps 
the  best  thing  in  the  dialogues.  One  great  advantage 
of  these  works  remains  to  be  mentioned.  They  tri- 
umph over  the  form  in  which  they  are  written,  for  they 
never  once  remind  us  of  Lucian. 

But  Mrs.  Montagu  had  yet  to  achieve  her  unique 
distinction.  It  was  nine  years  later  that  she  delighted 
the  world  by  appearing  as  the  champion  of  Shake- 
speare, redressing  his  wrongs,^  and  vindicating  him 
from  the  charges  of  Voltaire.  She  published  a  work 
somewhat  largely  entitled,  An  Essay  on  the  Writings 
and  Genius  of  Shakespear,  Compared  with  the  Greek  and 
French  Dramatic  Poets,  with  some  Remarks  upon  the 
Misrepresentations  of  Mons.  de  Voltaire.  The  attacks 
upon  Shakespeare  which  Mrs.  Montagu  felt  it  incum- 
bent upon  herself  to  answer  need  no  discussion  here ;  ^ 
it  may  suffice  to  say  that  her  defence  was  more  widely 
read  in  England  than  the  'misrepresentations'  which 
called  it  into  being.  It  was  regarded  as  a  standard 
piece  of  criticism,  and  its  fame  penetrated  to  France 
and  even  to  Italy  .^     It  is  impossible  to  give  adequate 

*  The  phrase  is  from  Bas  Bleu. 

2  See  Lounsbury's  Shakespeare  and  Voltaire,  New  York,  1902. 

3  See  Walpole's  Letters  11.  67. 


170  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

illustrations  of  the  esteem  in  which  the  book  was  held.^ 
It  conferred  upon  Mrs.  Montagu  the  reputation  of  a 
critic,  and  gave  her  an  enviable  position  among  Eng- 
lish writers  for  the  space  of  thirty  years.  In  the  chorus 
of  praise  with  which  this  feeble  book  was  greeted  there 
was  but  one  discordant  voice.  When  Reynolds  re- 
marked that  Mrs.  Montagu's  essay  did  her  honour, 
Dr.  Johnson  retorted  :  '  Yes,  Sir,  it  does  her  honour,  but 
it  would  do  nobody  else  honour.  I  have  indeed,  not 
read  it  all.  But  when  I  take  up  the  end  of  a  web,  and 
find  it  packthread,  I  do  not  expect  by  looking  further 
to  find  it  embroidery.  Sir,  I  will  venture  to  say,  there 
is  not  one  sentence  of  true  criticism  in  her  book.'  ^ 

It  is  to  this  view  that  posterity  —  when  it  has  had 
any  views  at  all  on  the  subject  —  has  inclined.  Pro- 
fessor Huchon  naturally  deplores  it,^  and  builds  up  a 
judicious  defence  of  the  defence.  But  the  modern 
reader  will  probably  agree  with  Mr.  Lounsbury  that 
*it  is  in  many  ways  one  of  the  most  exasperating  of 
books.'     Mrs.    Montagu's    ignorance    of    the    Eliza- 

'  See  Lounsbury,  op.  cit. 

2  Life  2.  88.  As  late  as  1787,  she  was  thus  described  in  the  Epilogue  to 
Thomas  Holcroft's  play.  Seduction : 

Say,  shall  not  we,  with  conscious  pride  proclaim 
A  female  critic  raised  —  ev'n  Shakespear's  Fame ! 
Towards  the  end  of  the  century  the  fame  of  the  book    declined.     Mrs. 
Montagu  was  anonymously  attacked  by  Mathias  in  his  Pursuits  of  Litera- 
ture (1794).     In  speaking  of  commentators  on  Shakespeare  he  says  (p.  37) : 
Nor  can  I  pass  Lycisca  Montagu, 
Her  yelp  though  feeble,  and  her  sandals  blue. 
*  Mrs.  Montagu  and  her  Friends,  chapter  2. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  171 

bethan  era  was  both  profound  and  extensive.  Her 
conception  of  Shakespeare's  environment  may  be 
deduced  from  the  following  quotation  : 

The  songs  sung  by  our  bards  at  feasts  and  merry- 
makings were  of  a  very  coarse  kind  :  as  the  people  were 
totally  illiterate,  and  only  the  better  sort  could  read 
even  their  mother  tongue,  their  taste  was  formed  on 
these  compositions.  As  yet  our  stage  had  exhibited 
only  those  palpable  allegories  by  which  rude  unlettered 
moralists  instruct  and  please  the  gross  and  ignorant 
multitude.^ 

A  woman  who  conceived  of  Shakespeare  as  living  *  in 
the  dark  shades  of  Gothic  barbarism,'  ^  and  who  la- 
mented his  lack  of  *the  admonitions  of  delicate  con- 
noisseurs '  ^  had  in  effect  yielded  all  that  the  most 
virulent  critic  could  demand.  Mrs.  Montagu's  enthu- 
siasms seem  very  pallid  after  her  alarming  concessions. 
She  considers  Falstaff  humorous  and  Macbeth  tragic, 
and  is,  in  general  and  as  usual,  platitudinous.  But 
her  continuous  apologies  and  concessions  really  form 
the  staple  of  her  work.  '  She  found, '  says  Lounsbury, 
*the  speech  of  Brutus  to  the  people  in  Julius  Ccesar, 
quaint  and  affected.  She  exhibited  her  utter  inca- 
pacity to  comprehend  the  rhetorical  skill  of  Antony  by 
declaring  that  the  repetition  of  the  epithet  "honorable" 
in  his  speech  was  perhaps  too  frequent.  The  character 
of  Pistol  in  the  second  part  of  Henry  IV  was  too  much 
for  her  to  understand.  Following  previous  critics  she 
found  many  bombast  speeches  in  the  tragedy  of  Macbeth. 

1  Essay,  p.  19.  *  jf,^  p,  jg.  ^  75  p  150. 


172  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Like  her  predecessors  she  unfortunately  forgot  to 
particularize  them;  lapse  of  time  has  now  made  it 
difficult  to  discover  them.' 

One  of  the  features  of  Mrs.  Montagu's  Essay  was 
a  series  of  comparisons  between  the  Shakespearian 
drama  and  the  ancient  Greek.  Here  she  was  indeed  on 
dangerous  ground,  for  she  could  not  read  the  language 
of  iEschylus.  This,  however,  did  not  discourage  her 
from  expressing  herself  very  decidedly  on  the  charac- 
teristics of  his  art.  She  pronounces  the  supernatural 
element  in  The  Persians  unfitted  to  the  piece,  and  finds 
*  something  of  a  comic  and  satirical  turn'  in  the  ghost 
of  Darius.^  She  asserts  that  the  Eumenides  of  the 
Oresteian  trilogy  *seem  both  acting  out  of  their  sphere 
and  below  their  character ' ;  ^  but  admits  that  the  whole 
story  'might  be  allegorical.'  Such  indeed  she  con- 
sidered very  nearly  all  of  iEschylus  to  be ;  for  she  had  a 
peculiar  notion  that  his  materials  were  derived  at 
second-hand  'from  the  hieroglyphic  land  of  Egypt,' 
and,  though  in  the  grosser  times  of  Greece  literally 
understood  by  the  vulgar,  were  in  more  philosophic 
ages  'again  transmuted  into  allegory.'^  But  it  is  idle 
longer  to  stir  this  forgotten  dust. 

A  woman  truly  learned  in  the  classics,  whose  abiding 
common  sense  protected  her  from  the  ridicule  freely 
poured  out  upon  bluestockings,  was  Miss  (or,  by 
courtesy,  Mrs.)  Elizabeth  Carter,  the  spinster  of  Deal. 

Essay,  p.  161.  ^  75  p  153  3  75.  p.  155. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  173 

To  Mrs.  Montagu  (patron  of  letters)  she  was  an  indul- 
gent preceptress,  a  very  Pierian  source  of  learning,  and 
much  that  passed  as  erudition  in  the  'female  Maecenas' 
was  in  reality  derived  at  second-hand  from  Mrs.  Carter. 
Mrs.  Montagu  was  never  unwilling  to  sit  at  the  feet  of 
the  woman  whose  reading  ranged  from  Aristotle  to 
Petrarch  and  from  Diodorus  Siculus  to  the  Sorrows  of 
Werther,^  who  would  correspond  with  her  respecting  the 
Newtonian  mechanics  or  the  Stoic  philosophers. 

Mrs.  Carter's  reputation  was  made  by  a  translation 
of  the  extant  works  of  Epictetus,  an  elegant  quarto  put 
forth  in  1758,  provided  with  an  introduction  and  ample 
notes.  The  style  of  the  translation  is,  in  a  very  high 
degree,  chaste  and  pleasing,  and  nowhere  suggests  the 
line-by-line  method  of  the  laborious  translator.  The 
introductory  essay  is  an  admirable  exposition  of  the 
Stoic  philosophy.  The  following  specimen  may  show 
that  Mrs.  Carter  was  capable  not  only  of  a  spirited 
style,  but  of  geniune  critical  treatment  of  her  subject : 

About  the  generality  of  mankind,  the  Stoics  do  not 
appear  to  have  given  themselves  any  kind  of  trouble. 
They  seemed  to  consider  all  (except  the  few  who  were 
students  in  the  intricacies  of  a  philosophic  system)  as 
very  little  superior  to  Beasts :  and,  with  great  tran- 
quillity, left  them  to  follow  the  devices  of  their  own 
ungoverned  appetites  and  passions. 

With  regard  to  the  value  of  the  book  as  a  translation 
of  Epictetus,  it  is  perhaps  suflScient  to  point  out  that 
it  was,  in  its  own  time,  a  standard  commentary,  that  it 

^  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  3.  251  and  224. 


174  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

passed  into  a  second  edition  in  1759,  and  that  it  is 
the  basis  upon  which  a  subsequent  translator  has  been 
content  to  build. ^  It  has,  moreover,  renewed  its  youth 
in  the  recent  reprints  of  popular  libraries  of  the  classics. ^ 

Mrs.  Carter  has,  therefore,  transferred  to  modern 
times  something  of  her  scholarly  fame.  Yet  she  was  not 
a  pedant,  and  never  gave  herself  the  airs  of  a  femme  sa~ 
vante.  Johnson  (who  wrote  a  Greek  epigram  in  her  hon- 
our that  she  might  be  celebrated  in  'as  many  different 
languages  as  Lewis  le  Grand '  ^)  used  to  say  that  she 
could  'make  a  pudding  as  well  as  translate  Epictetus 
from  the  Greek,  and  work  a  handkerchief  as  well  as 
compose  a  poem.'^  He  paid  her  the  compliment  of 
receiving  two  of  her  essays  for  the  pages  of  The  Ram- 
hlerj'  and  these,  though  dull,  are  not  more  unreadable 
than  the  rest  of  that  periodical. 

Of  her  collected  poems  there  were  four  editions 
during  her  own  life.  But  it  must  be  frankly  admitted 
that  her  reputation  as  an  independent  author,  though 
respectable  in  her  own  day,^  has  since  suffered  total 
extinction.  Yet  the  student  may  discover  in  her  poems 
here  and  there  a  point  of  antiquarian  interest.  For  our 
purpose  the  volume  is  significant  as  containing  lyrics  to 
Mrs.  Vesey  and  Mrs.  Montagu.     Both  poems,  though 

*  Higginson.  ^  'The  Temple  Classics'  and  'Everyman's  Library.' 
'  Life  1.  123.  *  Johnsonian  Miscellanies  2.  11. 

^  Numbers  44  and  100.  They  were  reprinted  in  the  editions  of  her  col- 
lected poems. 

*  Young  praised  her  in  his  poem  Resignation  (Part  2).  Like  Eve,  Mrs. 
Carter  and  Mrs.  Montagu  have  'caused  a  fall  —  A  fall  of  fame  in  man.' 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  175 

addressed  to  living  ladies,  contrive  to  belong  to  the 
Churchyard  School  and  to  prolong  faint  echoes  of  Gray. 
Two  of  the  stanzas  addressed  to  Mrs.  Vesey  are  plainly 
intended  to  counteract  that  lady's  rationalism,  and 
may  be  quoted  here  as  a  specimen  of  Mrs.  Carter's 
poetic  powers : 

Not  for  themselves  the  toiling  Artists  build ; 

Not  for  himself  contrives  the  studious  Sage : 
To  distant  Views  by  mystic  Force  compelled. 

All  give  the  present  to  t\ve  future  age.  .  .  . 

Yet  clieck  that  impious  Thought,  my  gentle  Friend, 
Which  bounds  our  Prospects  by  our  fleeting  Breath, 

Which  hopeless  sees  unfinished  Life  descend. 
And  ever  bars  the  Prison  Gates  of  Death. ^ 

Over  the  whole  volume  is  cast  the  shadow  of  the  now- 
fashionable  melancholy,  and  much  is  made  of  the  mid- 
night moon,  the  evening  dew,  the  'Gothic  pile,'  and 
the  ivy  bower  of  the  bird  of  night.  These  are  worth 
mention  as  showing  that  Mrs.  Carter's  interests  were 
not  bounded  by  the  school  of  Pope.     Her  tastes,  like 

He  institutes  a  comparison  with  Addison.  But  Lord  Lyttelton  is  even 
bolder :  Carter's  singing  reminds  him  at  times  of  the  angels  singing  over 
Bethlehem  and  at  times  of  Sappho, 

'  Greece  shall  no  more 

Of  Lesbian  Sappho  boast.  .  .  .     For  the  sacred  head 

Of  Britain's  poetess  the  Virtues  twine 

A  nobler  wreath.' 
—  On   reading    Miss    Carter  s    Poems    in    Manuscript.      Mr.    Smelt    told 
Fanny  Burney  that  he  considered  Mrs.  Carter's  Ode  the  best  in  the  lan- 
guage.    Diary  4.  222. 

^  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,  3d  edition,  1776,  p.  94,  *To  Mrs.  Vesey.' 


176  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Mrs.  Vesey's,  grew  increasingly  romantic,  and  though 
she  detested  Werther  ^  and  never  doubted  that  Rousseau 
was  mad,^  she  was  always  an  affectionate  believer  in 
Ossian.^  She  felt  the  new  passion  for  landscape.  In 
thought  she  accompanies  Mrs.  Vesey  to  the  cliffs  of 
Snowden,^  and  regrets  that  Mrs.  Montagu  cannot 
ascend  the  heights  of  windy  Morven.^  At  Eastry  she 
dreams  herself  back  to  the  worship  of  Woden.^  Her 
interest  in  Gothic  architecture  is  intense,  and  she 
writes  about  the  demolition  of  old  buildings  like  a  dis- 
ciple of  Ruskin  :  '  It  seems  to  me  that  when  a  fair 
inheritance  is  transmitted  to  a  family  they  ought  to 
feel  a  certain  degree  of  tenderness  to  the  abode  of  the 
ancestors  from  whom  it  is  derived,  which  ought  at 
least  to  sink  quietly  by  the  silent  depredations  of  time, 
and  not  be  torn  down  by  the  rude  hand  of  human 
violence.'  ^ 

This  interest  in  romance  enabled  her  to  understand 
the  Celtic  imaginings  of  Mrs.  Vesey  as  her  learning  and 
her  knowledge  of  philosophy  gave  her  a  control  over 
Mrs.  Montagu.  Her  friendship  with  the  two  ladies 
was  unruffled  throughout,  and  she  received  an  annuity 
of  £100  from  the  latter  without  any  sacrifice  of  dignity. 
She  never  lost  her  head  about  anything  —  least  of  all 

1  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  3.  224. 

2  lb.  3.  180. 

3  lb.  2.  292. 

*  Series  of  Letters  3.  288. 

*  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  1.  313. 
«  lb.  3.  276. 

7  lb.  3.  110. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  177 

about  herself.  She  was  a  scholar  and  had  a  scholar's 
love  of  the  classics,  yet  she  was  broad  enough  to  know 
when  the  age  was  widening  its  horizon.  In  an  age  of 
prudes,  she  dared  to  like  Tom  Jones.  In  an  age  of 
wits,  she  appreciated  wit,  yet  had  the  sense  to  see  that 
it  is  a  '  squint  of  the  understanding  which  is  mighty  apt 
to  set  things  in  a  wrong  place.'  ^  She  understood  and 
approved  what  was  best  in  the  salons,  but  could  be 
happy  without  any  pretensions  to  a  career  in  them. 
Thus  her  life  was  passed  serenely  without  social 
rivalries,  without  the  attempt  or  desire  to  follow  her 
ostentatious  friends  afar,  and  while  escaping  the  criti- 
cism so  freely  visited  upon  them,  she  had  the  honour  of 
contributing  by  her  quiet,  serious,  and  almost  unseen  in- 
fluence to  whatever  of  solid  worth  they  were  to  achieve. 

Intimately  associated  with  Miss  Carter  was  'the 
admirable  Mrs.  Chapone,'  who,  when  Miss  Mulso,  had 
been  one  of  Richardson's  'Daughters.'  Her  two 
chief  works.  Letters  on  the  Improvement  of  the  Mind  and 
Miscellanies  in  Prose  and  Verse,  were  the  result  of 
bluestocking  patronage,  and  were  dedicated  to  Mrs. 
Montagu  and  Mrs.  Carter  respectively.  The  former, 
having  seen  Mrs.  Chapone's  letters  to  a  favourite  niece, 
recommended  their  publication,  and  assisted  in  pre- 
paring them  for  the  press  by  correcting  them  with  her 
'elegant  pen.'  ^  The  preparation  of  the  second  volume 
was  undertaken  at  the  instigation  of  Mrs.  Carter  and 

^  Series  of  Letters  4.  112.  *  Dedication  to  the  Letters, 

N 


178  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

with  the  approval  of  Mrs.  Montagu;  though  Mrs. 
Delany  claims  the  honour  of  having  first  put  the  plan 
into  the  author's  head.^ 

Mrs.  Chapone's  Letters  were  supposed  to  have  had 
an  enormous  influence  on  the  conduct  of  young  women. 
According  to  Hannah  More,  in  Sensibility,  Chapone 
'forms  the  rising  age.'  In  Samuel  Hoole's  Aurelia,  the 
heroine  has  a  vision  of  an  ideal  woman : 

On  the  plain  toilet,  with  no  trophies  gay, 
Chapone's  instructive  volume  open  lay. 

But  one  is  inclined  to  suspect  that  this  volume  belongs 
to  that  large  class  of  admonitory  works  less  popular 
with  the  young  than  with  their  parents  and  preceptors. 
The  book  was  put  into  the  hands  of  every  young  girl 
from  the  Princess  Royal  downwards.  Mrs.  Delany 
considered  it  next  to  the  Bible  as  an  entertaining  and 
edifying  work  for  youthful  females.  She  advises  that 
not  more  than  six  lines  of  it  be  read  at  one  sitting,  in 
order  that  it  may  be  the  more  deeply  impressed  on  the 
attention,  and  thinks  that  the  historical  and  geo- 
graphical parts  of  it  should  be  got  by  heart.  She  hopes 
her  grand-niece  will  read  it  once  a  year,  until  she  has 
a  daughter  to  read  it  to  her.^  Mrs.  Chapone  herself 
smiled  at  the  popularity  of  the  book,  and  considered  its 
success  to  be  due  principally  to  the  patronage  of  Mrs. 
Montagu,  and  in  part  to  the  'world's  being  so  fond  of 

^  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  5.  93;    14  January  1775. 
2  lb.  5.  55,  309. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  179 

being  educated.'  ^  It  is  probable  that  it  was  generally 
used  as  an  antidote  to  the  Letters  of  Chesterfield  which 
appeared  about  the  same  time,  and  had  a  very  different 
reception. 

Mrs.  Chapone's  Letters  consist  almost  entirely  of 
advice;  if  she  ever  wanders  from  this  it  is  to  give  in- 
struction. She  treats  in  turn  of  religion,  the  Bible,  the 
affections,  the  temper,  economy,  politeness,  geography, 
and  history.  It  is  all  admirable,  incontrovertible, 
wholesome,  and  heavy.  It  is  like  oatmeal  —  an  old- 
fashioned  food  which  should  be  consumed  in  quantities 
by  the  young,  but  for  which  they  perversely  seem  to 
have  no  appetite.  It  will  be  remembered  that  when 
Lydia  Languish  received  an  untimely  visit  from  Mrs. 
Malaprop,  she  wished  to  be  found  reading  Mrs.  Cha- 
pone ;  though  her  interests  were  more  seriously  engaged 
by  works  less  uplifting.  Of  literary  quality  in  these 
Letters  one  can  hardly  speak,  for  it  is  difficult  to  diffuse 
literary  quality  through  two  hundred  pages  of  solid 
advice. 

The  contents  of  Mrs.  Chapone's  second  volume  are 
hardly  different.  There  are  essays  ('Affectation  and 
Simplicity' ;  'Conversation'),  but  they  are  in  the  same 
hortatory  strain  as  the  Letters.  There  are  poems  — 
fortunately  few  —  several  of  which  are  addressed  to 
Elizabeth  Carter.  They  are,  in  general,  like  that  lady's 
poems,  save  that  they  reveal  the  influence  of  Collins 
rather  than  of  Gray. 

^  Posthumous  Works  of  Mrs.  Chapone  1.  163. 


180  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

The  most  interesting  things  Mrs.  Chapone  wrote 
were  her  famiHar  letters.'  They  contain  many  inter- 
esting remarks  on  Richardson,  and  Johnson,  both  of 
whom  were  personally  known  to  the  author.  They 
have  an  independence,  an  ease,  and  a  vivacity  that  are 
quite  lacking  in  the  more  solemn  productions.  The 
reader  of  them  may  find  it  in  his  heart  to  regret  that 
Mrs.  Chapone  was  so  filled  with  a  sense  of  the  earnest- 
ness of  life  and  of  the  importance  of  piety.  A  long 
indulgence  in  frivolity  might  have  saved  her. 

Miss  Hannah  More  had  larger  ambitions  and  more 
varied  talents  than  the  other  bluestocking  authors. 
She  wrote  poems  lyrical,  occasional,  and  narrative; 
she  wrote  dramas  tragic,  classical,  and  sacred ;  and  she 
wrote  essays  and  critiques  of  conduct.  In  all  her 
earlier  work  she  was  assisted  and  inspired  by  the  blue- 
stockings. She  was  their  chosen  poet.  She  repre- 
sented them  in  print  as  Mrs.  Montagu  represented  them 
in  the  salon.  She  celebrated  them  all  in  verse,  and 
dedicated  in  turn  to  Mrs.  Boscawen,  Mrs.  Montagu, 
and  Mrs.  Vesey.  It  is  with  this  earlier  period  of  her 
career  that  we  are  exclusively  concerned ;  the  volumi- 
nous works  which  the  lady  produced  after  her  separation 
from  the  bluestockings  form  no  proper  part  of  our 
inquiry. 

Miss  More's  relations  with  the  bluestockings  began 

'  Her  letters  to  Pepys,  printed  by  Mrs.  Gaussen,  in  A  Later  Pepys,  are 
not  so  interesting.  There  is  a  charming  note  to  Fanny  Burney  in  the 
Diary  5.  50. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  181 

in  1774,  soon  after  her  arrival  in  London,  The  exact 
date  of  her  first  visit  to  the  metropolis  is  uncertain. 
Her  biographer,  Roberts,  who  seldom  gives  himself  any 
concern  with  dates,  says  that  this  took  place  in  '  1773 
or  4 ' ;  but  inasmuch  as  Miss  More  dedicated  her 
Inflexible  Captive  to  Mrs.  Boscawen  as  early  as  March 
1,  1774,  the  former  date  would  appear  the  more  prob- 
able. Her  introduction  to  the  literati  was  due  to  Garrick, 
whose  interest  in  Miss  More  had  been  roused  by  her 
description  of  his  acting  in  Lear.^  By  1775  Hannah 
More  was  a  recognized  member  of  the  circle  that  sur- 
rounded Mrs.  Montagu.  Her  poems,  Bas  Bleu  and 
Sensibility,  which  have  been  noticed  elsewhere  in  this 
book,  were  composed  directly  in  their  honour;  but 
works  of  a  more  public  appeal  created  no  less  enthusiasm 
among  these  ladies.  Thus  her  ballad,  Sir  Eldred  of  the 
Bower,  which  appeared  in  1775,  was  greeted  by  Mrs. 
Montagu  in  her  most  extravagant  manner.  She 
admired  'the  spirit  and  fire  of  the  gothic  character' 
in  the  tale ;  the  simplicity  of  the  plot,  the  depiction  of 
ancient  manners  (save  the  mark!),  the  primitive  senti- 
ments, and  the  characterization  —  all  these  challenged 
the  critical  approval  of  Mrs.  Montagu.  The  tale  of 
The  Bleeding  Rock,  in  the  same  volume,  she  esteemed  no 
less  highly.  'Your  Rock,'  she  wrote,  'will  stand  unim- 
paired by  ages  as  eminent  as  any  in  the  Grecian  Parnas- 
sus.' -     Such  was  the  measure  of  bluestocking  praise. 

^  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  Hannah  More  1.  47. 
2  76.  1.  60. 


182  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

But  the  poems  had  a  sanction  more  important  than 
this.  They  were  read  by  a  larger  circle,  Reynolds, 
Garrick,  and  Johnson ;  they  became  the  '  theme  of 
conversation  in  all  polite  circles.'  Johnson  could 
repeat  all  the  best  stanzas  by  heart.  ^  He  read  both 
poems  with  the  author,  made  some  alterations  in  Sir 
Eldred,  and  even  —  as  was  his  custom  with  poems  sub- 
mitted to  his  judgment  —  added  certain  lines  to  it.^ 
The  poems  belong  to  the  Gothic  school,  and  may 
well  have  been  suggested  by  Percy's  Reliques;  John- 
son's interest  in  them  would  be  hard  to  understand 
were  they  not  the  production  of  a  woman  whom  he 
playfully  termed  'the  most  powerful  versificatrix ' 
in  the  language.  But  the  bluestockings  loved  romance  ^ 
and  the  primitive  world  to  which  they  thought  it  intro- 
duced them.  The  fact  that  this  world,  as  conceived 
by  Hannah  More,  has  no  remote  similarity  to  our  own 
made  it  only  the  more  conformable  to  bluestocking 
standards  of  the  antique.  In  reading  this  lady's  poems 
and  plays  one  is  constantly  reminded  of  those  still- 
popular  engravings  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in  which 
distressed  virgins,  in  carefully  studied  poses,  cast  their 
melting  eyes  up  to  heaven.  They  live  in  bowers ; 
refer  to  themselves  in  the  third  person,  as  the  'sad 
Elwina'  and  'the  distressed  Julia';  and  when  disap- 
pointed in  love,  or  (to  speak  in  their  own  idiom)  when 
their  flame  is  not  reciprocated,  immediately  go  mad, 

*  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  63. 

2  76.  1.  64.  3  See  above,  pp.  147  fif. ;  175. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  183 

and  after  a  painful  scene  before  the  footlights  complete 
their  career  by  sudden  death.  Their  lovers  are  of 
sterner  stuff.  They  seek  wars  in  distant  climes,  disap- 
pear for  long  periods  of  time,  and  are  reckoned  dead,  only 
to  reappear  just  as  some  domestic  tragedy  is  reaching 
its  climax ;  they  are  for  ever  drawing  their  swords  — 
frequently  to  plunge  them  into  their  own  bosoms. 
Miss  More  made  full  use  of  the  poetic  license  which 
governs  this  pasteboard  world.  Her  characters  are 
burdened  with  no  human  motives,  and  it  is  idle  to  seek 
for  related  cause  and  effect  in  their  conduct.  But 
morality  flourishes.  Thus  in  Sir  Eldred  we  learn  the 
dangers  of  jealousy : 

The  deadliest  wounds  with  which  we  bleed 

Our  crimes  alone  inflict ; 
Man's  mercies  from  God's  hand  proceed, 

His  miseries  from  his  own. 

But  as  the  hero  never  once  in  the  course  of  the  poem 
acted  like  a  human  being,  the  force  of  the  moral  is 
somewhat  impaired. 

In  1777  Miss  More  essayed  a  higher  flight.  She 
had  written  dramas  in  her  school-teaching  days,^  and 
now,  with  the  assistance  of  Garrick,  produced  a 
romantic  tragedy,  entitled  Percy.  Its  title,  if  not  its 
contents,  indicates  the  influence  of  Home's  Douglas. 
The  situation  in  this  play,  venerable  in  romance,  deals 
with  two  rival  houses,  those  of  Percy  and  Douglas, 
a  heroine  forced  into  an  unwilling  marriage  with  the 

^  Notably  the  Inflexible  Captive,  based  on  the  story  of  Regulus. 


184  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

rival  of  her  lover,  who  has  been  killed  in  the  Crusades. 
The  distressed  heroine  and  the  returned  lover  (who 
had  not  really  been  killed)  meet  in  a  garden-bower :  ^ 

Percy.       Am  I  awake  ?     Is  that  Elwina's  voice  ? 

Elwina.     Percy,    thou   most   adored  —  and   most   de- 
ceived ! 
If  ever  fortitude  sustained  thy  soul. 
When  vulgar  minds  have  sunk  beneath  the 

stroke, 
Let  thy  imperial  spirit  now  support  thee.  — 
If  thou  canst  be  so  wondrous  merciful, 
Do  not,  O  do  not  curse  me  !  —  but  thou  wilt. 
Thou   must  —  for   I   have   done   a   dreadful 

deed, 
A  deed  of  wild  despair,  a  deed  of  horror. 
I  am,  I  am  — 

Percy  Speak,  say,  what  art  thou  ? 

Elwina.  Married. 

Percy.  Oh ! 

It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  the  course  of  the  tragedy ; 
for  the  reader's  own  imagination  will  suggest  it. 

The  play  was  a  success  in  every  way.  It  ran  for 
twenty-one  nights.  No  tragedy  for  years  had  been  so 
successful.  Mrs.  Barry  was  at  her  finest  in  the  mad- 
scene  at  the  end.  The  author  made  nearly  six  hundred 
pounds.^  The  play  was  translated  into  German,  and 
acted  with  success  in  Vienna.  The  bluestockings 
were  triumphant.  Mrs.  Montagu  appeared  repeatedly 
in  her  box  at  Covent  Garden.  Mrs.  Boscawen,  who  could 
carry  Duchesses  to  the  theatre  with  her,  sent  the  author 

1  Act  III. 

^  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  140. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  185 

a  wreath  of  bay.^  Mrs.  Delany  invited  her  to  dinner. 
Garrick,  who  had  written  the  prologue,  introduced 
her  to  Home,  thus  presenting  'Percy  to  the  Douglas.'  ^ 

In  Percy  Miss  More  reached  the  summit  of  her  early 
achievement,  and  the  book  is  still  sought  by  collectors. 
Readers,  if  in  an  indulgent  mood,  will  perhaps  agree 
with  Walpole,  who  found  the  play  better  than  he  ex- 
pected, and,  though  devoid  of  nature,  not  lacking  in 
good  situations.^  Severer  folk  will  side  with  Mrs. 
Thrale,  who  considered  it  foolish,  and  thought  Fanny 
Burney  ought  to  be  whipped  if  she  did  not  write  a 
better.^  The  truth  probably  lies  between  the  two 
opinions.  To  the  eighteenth  century  the  piece  cer- 
tainly seemed  to  have  merit.  At  any  rate,  it  was 
popular  enough  to  be  revived  in  order  that  Mrs. 
Siddons  might  appear  as  Elwina.  Had  it  survived 
to  the  mid-nineteenth  century  it  might  have  proved 
useful  as  a  libretto  for  Bellini  or  Donizetti.  In  the 
coloratura  woes  of  the  modern  diva,  the  distressed 
Elwina  would  have  found  her  perfect  interpretation. 

Garrick  was  so  pleased  with  the  success  of  Percy 
that  he  urged  Miss  More  to  write  another  tragedy. 
The  result  was  The  Fatal  Falsehood,  a  romantic  tragedy 
of  the  same  sort.  It  was  acted  late  in  the  spring  of 
1779,  some  months  after  the  death  of  Garrick,  and, 
though  it  did  not  duplicate  the  success  of  the  earlier 

i'76.     See  above,  p.  155.     ^  Roberts  1.  130. 
^Letters  10.  166-67;   11  December  1777. 
*  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay  1.  148  (1778). 


186  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

play,  was  enthusiastically  received.  With  its  produc- 
tion Miss  More's  connection  with  the  London  stage 
came  to  an  end.^ 

The  Fatal  Falsehood  sinks  far  below  the  level  of 
Percy.  It  probably  suffered  from  the  lack  of  Garrick's 
revising  hand ;  though  it  is  doubtful  if  even  his  genius 
could  have  introduced  any  semblance  of  reality  into  a 
series  of  situations  so  preposterous.  Miss  More  is 
usually  content  to  depend  upon  accident  as  the  source 
of  her  dramatic  effects ;  but  in  The  Fatal  Falsehood  she 
attempted  to  depict  in  Bertrand  a  villain  as  subtle  as 
lago.  Although  he  analyzes  himself  and  his  motives 
in  a  series  of  soliloquies,  he  remains  a  tangle  of  absurd- 
ities, and  all  the  action  of  the  piece,  which  flows  from 
him,  must  be  similarly  described. 

Miss  More's  dramas,  as  well  as  her  poems  and  essays, 
were  intended  to  serve  the  cause  of  virtue,  about  which 
all  bluestockings  were  seriously  concerned.  Even 
the  plays  are  filled  with  a  sort  of  portable  morality  in 
the  shape  of  maxims  : 

The  treacherous  path  that  leads  to  guilty  deeds 
Is,  to  make  vice  familiar  to  the  mind. 

Miss  More  never  escaped  from  the  oflSce  of  preceptress  ; 
the  forming  spirit  of  all  her  work  is  that  of  the  Young 
Ladies'  Academy. 

In  the  same  year  which  saw  the  production  of  Percys 

^  The  'sacred'  dramas,  Moses  in  the  Bulrushes,  David  and  Goliath,  Bel- 
shazzar,  and  Daniel,  escaped  the  contamination  of  the  stage. 


BLUESTOCKINGS  AS  AUTHORS  187 

she  put  forth  a  volume  entitled  Essays  on  Several 
Subjects,  principally  intended  for  Young  Ladies.  The 
book  is  of  the  same  sort  as  Mrs.  Chapone's  Letters:  it 
warns  young  women  to  be  modest,  to  avoid  envy,  and 
guard  against  the  'obliquities  of  fraud'  in  lovers. 
Allowing  for  its  hopelessly  narrow  view  of  life,  it  may 
be  granted  that  the  advice  is  sound  enough.  But  the 
bluestockings  never  realize  that  good  advice  is  the 
cheapest  commodity  in  the  world. 

Florio,  a  tale  somewhat  inappropriately  dedicated 
to  Walpole,  is  a  sort  of  parable  in  verse,  designed  to 
enforce  such  lessons  as  are  conveyed  in  the  Essays. 
The  hero,  once  a  slave  to  frivolous  society,  is  con- 
verted by  reading  Johnson's  Idler  and  inspecting  the 
beauties  of  Nature  under  the  direction  of  his  mistress. 

With  Florio  we  reach  a  period  in  Miss  More's  literary 
career  and  the  end  of  what  may  be  called  the  blue- 
stocking influence  on  her  work.  Her  pietism,  which 
had  amused  Garrick,  was  now  becoming  chronic. 
She  declined  to  go  and  see  Mrs.  Siddons  as  Elwina, 
because  it  is  wrong  to  attend  the  theatre.  She  de- 
plored the  singing,  dancing,  and  feasting  in  which 
London  indulged  after  King  George's  recovery  of  his 
sanity.^  She  even  objected  to  the  phrase  merry  Christ- 
mas, as  being  bacchanalian  rather  than  Christian.^ 
Walpole,  who  was  naturally  distressed  by  all  this, 
made  a  charming  attack  on  Miss  More's  Low  Church 
faith  in  the  Ten  Commandments,  and  pointed  out  to 

1  Roberts  2.  153.  '^  lb.  I.  19\. 


188  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

her  that  she  was  guilty  of  the  Puritanical  heresy.^ 
The  truth  is  that  Miss  More's  sense  of  responsibility 
to  society  at  large  was  weighing  on  her  mind.  In 
1788  she  published  a  serious  call  to  a  more  solemn  view 
of  life  in  her  Thoughts  on  the  Importance  of  the  Planners 
of  the  Great  to  General  Society,  and  definitely  embarked 
upon  her  career  as  preceptress  in  public  morality. 
Meanwhile  she  was  drawing  steadily  away  from  her 
fashionable  friends.  At  last  she  came  to  think  any 
association  with  them  almost  wicked.  On  March  12, 
1794,  she  wrote  in  her  diary  : 

Dined  with  friends  at  Mrs.  .     What  dost  thou 

here,  Elijah  ?  Felt  too  much  pleased  at  the  pleasure 
expressed  by  so  many  accomplished  friends  on  seeing 
me  again.     Keep  me  from  contagion  !  ^ 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  influence  of  the  blue- 
stockings upon  others,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  for 
Hannah  More  it  had  been  an  excellent  corrective.  It 
had  at  least  prevented  her  from  comparing  herself  to 
Elijah. 

1  Roberts  2.  111.  ^  lb.  2.415. 


CHAPTER  X 

Mrs.  Montagu  as  a  Patron  of  the  Arts 

Above  all  things  Mrs.  Montagu  longed  to  send  her 
reputation  down  to  posterity  as  an  acknowledged 
patron  of  letters.  She  wished  to  attach  to  herself, 
after  the  manner  of  the  French  literary  ladies,  some 
poet,  essayist,  or  scholar,  whose  work  she  might  inspire 
and  supervise,  and  whose  reward  was  to  be  the  associa- 
tion of  her  name  with  his.  Hannah  More,  recognizing 
this  ambition,  calls  her  'the  female  Maecenas  of  Hill 
Street,'  ^  and  Dr.  Burney  asserts  that  she  'makes  each 
rising  art  her  care.'  ^  The  poet  for  whom  she  had  been 
waiting  appeared  in  the  summer  of  1766,  in  the  person 
of  James  Beattie,  a  young  professor  of  moral  philos- 
ophy at  Aberdeen,  who  was,  at  the  time,  unknown  in 
England. 

Beattie  was  by  nature  shy,  nervous,  self-conscious, 
and  uncertain  of  his  powers  —  a  type  familiar  in  the 
academic  world.  He  was  for  ever  finding  his  poems 
unworthy  of  him,  suppressing  them,  altering  and  cor- 
recting them,  and  threatening  never  to  complete  them. 
Por  such  a  person  a  patron  might  do  much.     Mrs. 

^  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  62. 
2  See  'Advice  to  the  Herald.^ 
189 


190  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Montagu  at  once  expressed  herself  to  Dr.  Gregory  (a 
common  friend  resident  in  Aberdeen)  as  highly  pleased 
with  Beattie's  poetry.  But  it  was  not  until  she  saw  the 
first  canto  of  the  Minstrel,  early  in  1771,  that  her 
judgment  was  fully  convinced.  She  now  set  to  work 
with  as  much  industry  as  charity  to  advance  her  chosen 
poet  in  the  world  of  letters.  She  sent  a  copy  of  the 
new  poem  to  Lord  Chatham,^  recommended  it  to  the 
attention  of  Percy  (the  inspiration  of  whose  essay  on 
the  minstrels  had  been  acknowledged  by  Beattie  in  his 
preface),  and  encouraged  her  protege  by  quoting  to  him 
the  praises  of  Lord  Lyttelton.  She  offered  sugges- 
tions respecting  the  advertisement  of  the  poem,  and 
wrote  to  a  bookseller  of  her  acquaintance  that  he  must 
recommend  the  poem  'to  all  people  of  taste.'  Such 
were  the  powers  of  the  female  patron  in  this  new  age. 
Mrs.  Montagu  also  interested  herself  in  another  work 
of  Beattie's,  a  book  now  quite  forgotten  but  then  just 
entering  upon  a  brilliant  career  of  popularity.  This 
was  no  other  than  an  Essay  on  Truth,  which  had  been 
published  in  1770,  and  had  almost  immediately  passed 
into  a  second  edition.  Mrs.  Montagu  very  flatteringly 
describes  the  vain  efforts  of  the  English  public  to  come 
at  this  volume.  She  has  herself  recommended  it  'to 
many  of  our  Bishops  and  others ;  but  all  have  com- 
plained this  whole  winter  that  the  booksellers  deny 
having  either  the  first  or  second  edition.  I  dare  say 
many  hundreds  would  have  been  sold  if  people  could 

1  Forbes's  Life  of  Beattie  1.  195 ;  letter  to  Gregory,  13  March  1771. 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    191 

have  got  them.'  ^  It  is  quite  obvious  that  the  aca- 
demic young  poet  needs  the  practical  assistance  of  the 
bluestocking,  friend  of  'Bishops  and  others.'  He  there- 
fore came  up  to  London  in  the  autumn  of  this  year, 
and  then  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  woman 
whom  he  ever  after  gratefully  acknowledged  as  his 
patron.  And  thus  the  Defender  of  Truth  and  the 
Defender  of  Shakespeare  met  together  —  to  their 
mutual  advantage.  Mrs.  Montagu's  mind  was  al- 
ready teeming  with  projects  for  the  advancement  of 
her  favourite.  In  the  spring  of  the  next  year,  upon 
hearing  that  Adam  Ferguson  of  Edinburgh  University 
was  to  go  abroad,  she  conceived  the  plan  of  having 
Beattie  transferred  to  his  chair,  and  succeeded  in 
interesting  the  Archbishop  of  York  in  the  matter,  only 
to  learn  that  the  professor  had  every  intention  of  re- 
turning to  his  work  after  his  temporary  absence.^ 
Nevertheless  she  was  the  means  of  introducing  Beattie 
to  the  Archbishop  and  to  his  brother.  Lord  Kinnoul,^ 
who  became  warm  friends  of  the  new  poet.  In  the 
following  year  she  instructed  Beattie  in  the  best  means 
of  bringing  his  case  to  the  attention  of  the  King,^ 
assuring  him  that  if  the  government  did  nothing  for 
him,  she  would  herself  'claim  the  honour  of  rendering 
his    situation    in    life    more    comfortable.'  ^     But    the 

'lb. 

2  M.  Forbes's  Beattie  and  his  Friends,  p.  66. 

» lb.  p.  68. 

*  Forbes's  Life  of  Beattie  1.  255;  May  1773. 

5  76.  1.  260.     Extract  from  Beattie's  Diary;  21  May  1773. 


192  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

government  did  not  disappoint  her.  Beattie  was 
presented  to  the  King  at  his  levee,  received  the  incense 
of  his  praise,  and,  later,  a  pension  of  two  hundred 
pounds,  and  a  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  from  Oxford. 
Mrs.  Montagu  shared  in  the  general  praise.  'Do  you 
not  honour  Mrs.  Montagu,'  wrote  Hester  Chapone  to 
Mrs.  Delany,  'for  the  pains  she  has  taken  to  introduce 
this  excellent  champion  of  Christianity  into  the  notice 
of  the  great  world  and  to  obtain  for  him  some  other 
regard  than  that  of  barren  fame  ? '  ^ 

Her  efforts  on  his  behalf  had  but  begun.  Abandon- 
ing a  plan  that  he  should  enter  the  Church  of  England 
—  partly  no  doubt  because  of  Beattie's  own  luke- 
warmness  —  she  thinks  he  may  perhaps  do  more 
service  to  religion  as  a  layman  than  as  a  priest,^  and 
she  now  urges  the  publication,  by  subscription,  of  a 
quarto  volume  of  Essays.  In  this  way,  she  thought, 
eight  hundred  or  a  thousand  pounds  might  be  gained.^ 
Patron  and  protege  together  drew  up  a  form  of  'sub- 
scription-paper,' and,  since  Beattie  shrank  from  any 
advertisement  in  newspapers,  Mrs.  Montagu  agreed, 
with  the  assistance  of  a  few  friends,  to  circulate  the 
document  herself.^  She  did  her  work  well.  In  the 
list  of  subscribers  to  the  book^  she  contrived  to  in- 
clude   not    only    every    prominent    bluestocking,    but 

*  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  4.  516 ;   13  June  1773. 

*  M.  Forbes,  op.  cit.  78.  In  this  matter  Johnson's  view  happened  to 
coincide  with  hers  {ib.  p.  90). 

«  76.  p.  75.  *  Ib.  pp.  95-6. 

'  Essays,  Edinburgh  1776. 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    193 

Reynolds,  Garrick,  Johnson,  a  host  of  peers,  her  friends 
the  Bishops,  the  two  Archbishops,  and  the  Hbraries  of 
Oxford.  She  was  the  recognized  sponsor  of  the  volume, 
and  when  the  publication  of  it  was  delayed,  it  was  part 
of  her  office  to  circulate  an  explanatory  card  of  Beat- 
tie's.^  When  it  finally  appeared  she  was  delighted 
with  it  in  its  every  aspect,  but  professed  to  find  it  rather 
insolent  in  a  native  of  Aberdeen  to  outdo  the  English 
in  style. ^ 

Meanwhile  the  second  canto  of  the  Minstrel  had  been 
sent  to  her  for  criticism,  and  was,  if  we  are  to  believe 
Beattie,  published  at  her  request.^  Four  years  later  a 
volume  of  select  poems  was  submitted  to  her  with 
the  request  that  she  suppress  those  of  which  she  did 
not  approve ;  and  when  at  last  Beattie  put  forth  the 
Minstrel  in  its  final  form,  he  requested  permission  to 
dedicate  the  first  canto  to  her  by  putting  her  name  into 
the  last  stanza  in  a  space  which  had  been  left  blank 
from  the  first : 

Here  pause,  my  gothic  lyre,  a  little  while. 
The  leisure  hour  is  all  that  thou  canst  claim. 
But  on  this  verse  if  Montagu  should  smile. 
New  strains  ere  long  shall  animate  thy  frame. 
And  her  applause  to  me  is  more  than  fame ; 

1  M.  Forbes,  p.  120. 

2  Beattie,  always  nervous  about  his  Scotticisms,  was  flatteringly  pleased, 
and  some  time  later  repaid  her  with  this  astounding  piece  of  flattery  :  '  My 
models  of  English  are  Addison  and  those  who  write  like  Addison,  particularly 
yourself.  Madam,  and  Lord  Lyttelton.  We  may  be  allowed  to  imitate  what 
we  cannot  hope  to  equal.'     Forbes's  Life  2.  115 ;   30  January  1783. 

2  Forbes's  Life  2.  132  and  M.  Forbes,  op.  cit.  p.  110. 


194  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

And  still  with  truth  accords  her  taste  refined. 
At  lucre  or  renown  let  others  aim, 
I  only  wish  to  please  the  gentle  mind 
Whom  Nature's  charms  inspire  and  love  of  human  kind. 

The  sweetness  of  this  languidly  conventional  note 
must  have  been  somewhat  spoiled  for  Mrs.  Montagu 
by  the  fact  that  the  lines  were  written  before  Beattie 
knew  her,  and  were,  if  we  may  trust  the  poet's  biog- 
rapher, originally  intended  for  another.^  But  there 
can  be  no  doubt  of  Beattie's  gratitude.  He  honoured 
his  patroness  by  naming  a  son  Montagu,  and  con- 
tinued to  visit  her  in  London  or  in  Sandelford  and  to 
submit  his  works  to  her  for  her  approval,  ^  that  form  of 
flattery  which  she  coveted  most  of  all.  They  honoured 
each  other  for  many  years  with  a  reasonable  regularity 
of  correspondence  which,  however,  does  more  credit  to 
their  earnestness  than  to  their  wit. 

The  relations  of  Beattie  and  Mrs.  Montagu  con- 
tinued serene  throughout  their  lives.  Each  was  grate- 
ful to  the  other  and  never  failed  to  make  a  public 
display  of  that  gratitude.  Mrs.  Montagu  bestowed 
her  favours  without  offence,  and  Beattie  received  them 
without  any  pretence  of  hesitation.  Each  was  happier 
for  having  known  the  other.     And  if  the  relation  of 

1  Arbuthnot.     Forbes's  Lije  1.  203  and  n. 

^  He  wrote  that  he  had  'been  making  some  progress  in  a  little  work  of 
which  you  saw  a  sketch  at  Sandelford,  and  which  you  did  me  the  honour 
to  read  and  approve  of.  It  was  your  approbation  and  that  of  the  Bishop  of 
Chester  and  Sir  William  Forbes  that  determined  me  to  revise,  correct,  and 
enlarge  it,  with  a  view  to  publication.'    Forbes  2.  164. 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    195 

author  and  patron  must  needs  exist,  theirs  is  a  specimen 
of  what  the  relation  may  be  at  its  best. 

The  relations  of  Robert  Potter,  the  translator  of 
iEschylus,  with  Mrs.  Montagu  are  of  the  same  general 
nature  as  those  of  Beattie.  It  was  with  trembling 
gratitude  that  he  accepted  and  incredible  flattery  that 
he  repaid  the  favours  which  the  lady  bestowed  upon 
him.  Her  attention  had,  it  would  appear,  been  caught 
by  the  publication  of  the  Greek  tragedian  in  English, 
—  the  publication  of  translations  being  always  a 
welcome  event  for  bluestockings  —  and  she  at  once 
suggested  to  the  translator  the  propriety  of  adding 
explanatory  notes.  He  adopted  the  suggestion,  and, 
when  publishing  his  Notes  in  the  following  year  (1778), 
improved  the  opportunity  to  dedicate  not  only  these 
but  the  original  volume  to  his  new-found  patron. 
In  a  prefatory  letter  to  her  he  outdid  Beattie  in  the 
use  of  superlatives.  The  notes  are  written,  he  pro- 
claims, only  because  Mrs.  Montagu  has  asked  for 
them,  and  with  him  a  hint  from  that  lady  is  a  com- 
mand ;  though  he  is  incapable  of  understanding  why 
so  accomplished  a  person  should  ask  for  notes,  since 
she  needs  them  'as  little  as  any  person  alive.'  The 
approbation  of  Mrs.  Montagu,  he  concludes,  is  'the 
highest  honour  any  writer  can  receive.' 

Loyalty  was  one  of  Mrs.  Montagu's  qualities.  None 
of  her  proteges  ever  had  occasion  to  complain  that  she 
lost   interest   or   declined   support.     Her   career   as   a 


196  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

patron  of  the  arts  is  sullied  by  no  quarrels ;  she  was 
the  subject  of  no  anonymous  libels  from  the  offended 
recipients  of  her  charity.  She  continued  her  favours  to 
Potter,  urging  him  to  proceed  with  his  translation  of 
Euripides,^  and  appearing  prominently  among  the 
subscribers  to  that  volume.  She  received  him  at  her 
assemblies,  and,  according  to  a  somewhat  doubtful 
anecdote,  presented  him  to  Dr.  Johnson. ^  Johnson, 
who  considered  Potter's  work  'verbiage'  (doubtless 
because  it  was  in  blank  verse),  snubbed  the  scholar 
and  mumbled  to  the  bluestocking,  '  Well,  well ! '  and 
*Well,  Madam,  and  what  then?' 

This  ungracious  reception  may  have  helped  Mrs. 
Montagu  in  inciting  Potter  to  attack  Johnson's  Lives  of 
the  Poets,  some  years  later ;  but,  according  to  Walpole, 
the  chief  aim  was  'to  revenge  the  attack  on  Lord 
Lyttelton.'  There  is,  I  believe,  no  existing  evidence 
for  this  gossip,  apart  from  the  pamphlet  itself ;  but 
there  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  for  rejecting  it.  In 
this  paper,  which,  it  must  be  said,  is  a  sufficiently 
dignified  and  worthy  pamphlet  as  pamphlets  go. 
Potter  quotes  Mrs.  Montagu's  Essay  on  Shakspeare 
by  way  of  demolishing  Johnson's  criticism  of  The  Bard, 
and  the  lady  and  Bishop  Hurd  are  proclaimed  'the 
two  best  Critics  of  this  or  any  other  age.'  ^  Of  this 
piece  of  nonsense  Walpole  has  written  the  last  word : 

'  See  Forbes's  Beattie  2.  41. 

2  Literary  Anecdotes  of  E.  H.  Barker,  London  1852. 

'  Inquiry  into  some  Passages  in  Dr.  Johnson's  Lives  of  the  Poets,  partic- 
ularly his  Observations  on  Lyric  Poetry  and  the  Odes  of  Gray.     London  1783. 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    197 

Were  I  Johnson,  I  had  rather  be  criticized  than 
flattered  so  fulsomely.  There  is  nothing  more  foohsh 
than  the  hyperboles  of  contemporaries  on  one  another, 
who,  hke  the  nominal  Dukes  of  Aquitaine  and  Nor- 
mandy at  a  coronation,  have  place  given  to  them  above 
all  peers,  and  the  next  day  shrink  to  simple  knights.^ 

It  is  a  pity  that  Potter  could  not  have  known  that  the 
utility  of  his  translations,  which  have  been  reprinted 
again  and  again,  would  outlive  the  fame  of  his  patron. 

A  classicist  of  much  more  importance  than  Potter 
did  not  disdain  to  court  Mrs.  Montagu.  It  was  in  June 
1788,  that  William  Cowper  published  in  the  Gentle- 
man s  Magazine  his  pleasant  verses  On  Mrs.  Montagu's 
Feather  Hangings.  He  had  himself  not  seen  the  room, 
but  knew  it  from  the  descriptions  of  his  cousin,  Lady 
Hesketh,  who  was  an  aspirant  to  Mrs.  Montagu's 
'academy.' 2  The  poet's  purpose  in  the  presentation 
of  this  poetical  tribute  seems  to  have  been  missed  by 
his  editors ;  but  it  is  clear  that  he  was  yielding  to  the 
pressure  of  Lady  Hesketh  and  attempting  to  bring 
himself  and  his  forthcoming  translation  of  Homer  to 
the  attention  of  the  bluestocking.  The  first  move  was 
a  failure.  Mrs.  Montagu,  it  would  seem,  took  no 
notice  of  the  lines  in  the  magazine,  though  they  were 
set  forth  as  'by  the  author  of  The  Task,'  already  a  poem 
of  national  fame.  In  August,  Cowper  writes  to  Lady 
Hesketh : 

1  Letters  13.  5. 

2  Cowper's  Letters,  edited  by  Thomas  Wright,  3.  267. 


198  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

To  me,  my  dear,  it  seemeth  that  we  shall  never  by 
any  management  make  a  deep  impression  on  Mrs. 
Montagu.  Persons  who  have  been  so  long  accustomed 
to  praise  become  proof  against  it.^ 

It  was  necessary  to  adopt  a  new  plan.  Two  years  later 
Lady  Hesketh  decided  to  approach  Mrs.  Montagu 
herself,  and  requested  Cowper  to  permit  her  to  show  a 
portion  of  the  manuscript  to  that  lady.  The  poet, 
who  had  long  since  admired  the  Essay  on  Shakspeare 
and  who  had  acquired  the  most  exaggerated  notions 
of  the  lady's  learning,^  chose  the  first  two  books  of  the 
Iliad  to  present  as  a  sample  intending  to  '  carry  her  by  a 
coup  de  main,'  and  employing  'Achilles,  Agamemnon, 
and  the  two  armies  of  Greece  and  Troy,'  in  his  charge 
upon  the  bluestocking.  To  these  the  sixteenth  book 
of  the  Odyssey  was  added  by  Lady  Hesketh.  'It 
was  very  kind  in  thee,'  he  writes,^  'to  sacrifice  to  this 
Minerva  on  my  account.'  But  Minerva,  who  was  now 
seventy,  was  probably  glad  to  escape  from  the  affair 
with  a  concealment  of  her  ignorance  of  Homer.  She 
wrote  an  enthusiastic,  and,  be  it  added,  modest  letter 
to  Lady  Hesketh  about  the  new  translation,  and  put 

1  Cowper's  Letters,  edited  by  Thomas  Wright,  3.  306 ;  21  August  1788 ; 
cf .  3.  266 ;   267 ;   277. 

2  In  March  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Throckmorton, '  The  two  first  books  of  my 
Iliad  have  been  submitted  to  the  inspection  and  scrutiny  of  a  great  critic 
of  your  sex,  at  the  instance  of  my  cousin,  as  you  may  suppose.  The  lady 
is  mistress  of  more  tongues  than  a  few  (it  is  to  be  hoped  she  is  single)  and 
particularly  she  is  mistress  of  the  Greek.'  Letters  3.  444 ;  21  March  1790. 
The  book  was  published  in  July  1791. 

«  Letters  3.  439 ;  8  March  1790. 


a 


o 
o 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    199 

her  name  on  the  subscribers'  Hst.  Cowper  read  the 
letter  and  expressed  his  pride  in  what  was  said;  and 
there  the  matter  ended. 

The  precise  nature  and  extent  of  the  assistance  which 
Mrs.  Montagu  rendered  to  James  Barry,  the  painter, 
it  is  now  impossible  to  determine.  Certain  it  is  that 
she  consented  to  be  painted  by  him  (in  hideous  profile) 
for  that  hodge-podge  of  fresco  with  which  Barry 
covered  the  walls  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts.  She  is 
there  depicted  in  her  capacity  as  a  patron  of  the  arts.^ 

'To wards. the  centre  of  the  picture,'  writes  Barry, 
*is  seen  that  distinguished  example  of  female  excellence, 
Mrs.  Montagu,  who  long  honoured  the  Society  with 
her  name  and  subscription.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Montagu  ap- 
pears here  recommending  the  ingenuity  and  industry 
of  a  young  female  whose  work  she  is  producing,  .  .  . 
Between  these  ladies  [the  Duchesses  of  Devonshire  and 
Portland]  the  late  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  seems  pointing 
out  this  example  of  Mrs.  Montagu  to  their  Graces' 
attention  and  imitation.'  ^ 

The  juxtaposition  of  Johnson  and  Mrs.  Montagu,  the 
Great  Dictator  and  the  female  Maecenas,  must  have 
caused  inextinguishable  mirth  among  the  spectators 
who  knew  of  their  great  quarrel.  Mrs.  Montagu's 
resentment  at  Johnson's  treatment  of  Lyttelton  in  the 
Lives  of  the  Poets  has  been  much  discussed ;  but  the 
story  must  be  repeated  once  more  for  the  sake  of  the 

1  See  the  accompanying  illustration. 

2  Barry's  Series  of  Engravings  in  the    ...  Society  of  Arts,  London  1808. 


200  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

light  which  it  throws  upon  Mrs.  Montagu's  ambitions 
to  control  the  destinies  of  literature. 

Mrs.  Montagu  and  Lord  Lyttelton  had  been  close 
friends  for  many  years  preceding  the  death  of  the 
latter.  They  had  laboured  together  on  the  Dialogues  of 
the  Dead  (to  the  scandal,  Walpole  delighted  to  relate,  of 
the  lady's  postilion  i) ;  and  thus  Mrs.  Montagu's 
literary  fame  was,  in  a  way,  bound  up  with  the  peer's. 
When,  eight  years  after  the  death  of  Lyttelton,  John- 
son's account  of  him  appeared,  it  was  found  to  contain 
remarks  which  did  not  please  the  friends  of  the  late 
nobleman.  Far  from  being  satisfied  that  he  should 
have  been  deemed  worthy  of  inclusion  even  in  so  in- 
clusive a  list  as  Johnson's,  they  decided  to  take  offence 
because  a  certain  amount  of  blame  was  mingled  with  a 
certain  amount  of  praise.  Johnson  had,  for  example, 
criticised  'poor  Lyttelton'  for  thanking  the  Critical 
Reviewers  for  their  commendatory  notice  of  the 
Dialogues  of  the  Dead;  he  spoke  of  Lyttelton's  poems 
as  having  'nothing  to  be  despised  and  little  to  be  ad- 
mired,' and  of  his  songs,  in  particular,  as  'sometimes 
spritely  and  sometimes  insipid.'  Here  surely  is  as 
much  praise  as  posterity  would  care  to  give  to  Lyttel- 
ton ;  but  it  was  not  sufficient  for  the  women  who  owed 
some  part  of  their  reputation  to  the  fact  that  they  had 
been  intimate  with  a  peer.  According  to  Walpole,  it 
was  Mrs.  Vesey  who  began  the  attack,  but  it  was  cer- 
tainly Mrs.  Montagu  who  conducted  the  campaign. 

1  Walpole's  Letters  4.  319 ;  8  November  1759. 


MES.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    201 

The  reader  of  Fanny  Burney's  Diary  is  familiar  with 
the  details  of  this  feud  ;  the  reader  of  Walpole  will  find 
four  references  to  it  in  the  letters  written  at  the  opening 
of  1781. 

'She  told  me,'  writes  the  latter,  *as  a  mark  of  her 
high  displeasure,  that  she  would  never  ask  him  to 
dinner  again.  I  took  her  side,  and  fomented  the  quarrel, 
and  wished  I  could  have  made  Dagon  and  Ashtaroth 
scold  in  Coptic'  ^ 

Nothing  came  of  this  literary  feud  save  a  scene  at 
Streatham  between  Johnson  and  Pepys  which  frightened 
Fanny  Burney,  and  Potter's  attack  on  the  Lives  which 
has  been  mentioned  already ;  and  Mr.  Dobson  re- 
marks that  modern  readers  'will  perhaps  wonder  what 
the  dispute  was  about.'  ^  But  it  is  significant  as 
showing  the  influence  which  Mrs.  Montagu  thought 
she  exerted  in  the  world  of  letters,  and  the  means 
which  she  adopted  to  make  her  influence  felt. 

Johnson's  behaviour  during  this  quarrel  must,  I 
think,  have  been  due  to  something  other  than  wounded 
vanity.  It  was,  I  am  convinced,  due  to  this  very 
patronage  of  literature  which  the  bluestockings,  with 
Mrs.  Montagu  at  their  head,  were  attempting  to  set 
up.  There  can  be  no  more  annoying  spectacle  than 
that  of  a  person  to  whom  wealth  and  social  talents  have 
given  a  certain  minor  position  in  the  literary  world, 
and  who,  mistaking  gifts  for  genius,  attempts  to  exalt 

1/6.  11.  410;   3  March  1781. 

*  In  his  edition  of  the  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay. 


202  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

that  position  to  one  of  authority.  This  is  what  Mrs. 
Montagu  was  trying  to  do.  She  had,  without  a  shadow 
of  doubt,  achieved  a  certain  influence.  She  had 
bestowed  pensions  and  gifts  upon  deserving  authors 
and  scholars.  She  had  placed  her  name  on  a  hundred 
subscription  lists.  She  had  contributed  to  the  success 
of  Hannah  More's  tragedy,  Percy,  by  appearing,  more 
than  once,  in  a  box  at  the  theatre  where  it  was  being 
performed.  Elizabeth  Carter  and  Hester  Chapone 
(who  dedicated  her  Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu)  were 
examples  of  the  worthy  writer  whom  she  assisted  in 
one  way  or  another  by  her  unostentatious  charity. 
Laurence  Sterne  was  content,  as  early  as  1761,  to  make 
her  a  sort  of  literary  executor,^  'not  because  she  is  our 
cousin  —  but  because  I  am  sure  she  has  a  good  heart.' 
But  when,  through  the  influence  of  flattery,  she  mistook 
her  kind  heart  and  her  pleasant  interest  in  literature 
for  the  critical  authority  of  a  scholar  and  arbiter,  an 
authority  which  can  belong  to  but  one  or  two  in  any 
age,  she  brought  down  upon  herself,  not  unnaturally, 
the  wrath  of  Johnson  and  the  scorn  of  Walpole.  By 
November  1776,  she  had  reached  the  point  where  she 
could  write  thus  to  Garrick : 

'I  must  say  I  felt  for  Shakspeare  the  anxiety  one 
does  for  a  dead  friend,  who  can  no  longer  speak  for 
himself.'  ^ 

^  See  Melville's  Life  of  Sterne  1.  289  fiF.  and  Climenson's  Letters  of  Mrs. 
Montagu  2.  270  ff. 

-  Correspondence  of  David  Garrick  2.  189 ;  3  November  1776. 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    203 

In  1778  she  could  seriously  offer  Fanny  Burney, 
already  renowned  as  the  author  of  Evelina,  the  gift  of 
her  'influence,'  adding,  'We  shall  all  be  glad  to  assist 
in  spreading  the  fame  of  Miss  Burney.'  ' 

She  had  the  desire  to  direct  and  to  manage  which  is 
characteristic  of  the  experienced  woman  of  fashion,  who 
knows  the  value  of  her  personal  charm,  rather  than  of 
the  true  literary  critic,  who  is  usually  a  person  too 
wise  to  attempt  to  direct  the  stream  of  literature.  But 
Mrs.  Montagu  was  not  content  to  let  that  stream  flow 
as  it  would.  She  must  bring  comedies  to  the  attention 
of  Garrick  -  and  suggest  subjects  to  Hannah  More  ^ 
and  Mrs.  Carter ;  ^  she  must  guide  Potter  and  encourage 
Beattie.  In  the  pride  of  her  power  she  even  attempted 
the  delicate  task  of  influencing  the  elections  to  the 
Literary  Club ;  and  it  would  appear  that,  escaping 
the  detection  of  Johnson,  she  succeeded  in  her  aim,  for 
her  candidate,  who  was  no  other  than  Mr.  Vesey,  was 
chosen.  But  when  she  aspired  to  reverse  the  estimate 
of  the  greatest  living  critic  and  substitute  the  indulgent 
opinion  of  a  personal  friend,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
Johnson  should  somewhat  sharply  have  reminded  her 
and  her  coterie  of  what  their  opinion  was  really  worth. 
Few  to-day  will  be  found  to  regret  that  the  lady's  view 
did  not  prevail. 

^  Diary  1.  126. 

^  Correspondence  of  David  Garrick  1.  388  ff. 

3  A  Later  Pepys  2.  283. 

*  Posthumous  Works  of  Mrs.  Chapone  1.  151. 


204.  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

At  one  point  Mrs.  Montagu's  relations  with  her 
proteges  come  dangerously  near  to  farce  comedy.  Like 
all  the  bluestockings,  she  was  one  of  the  believers  in  the 
genius  of  Ann  Yearsley,  the  poetical  milk-woman  of 
Bristol,  who  was  regarded  for  a  time  as  a  female  Chat- 
terton.  It  was  part  of  the  work  of  bluestockings  to 
discover  genius.  They  had  discovered  Hannah  INIore ; 
they  had  discovered  Beattie  and  Mrs.  Chapone;  if 
they  had  not  discovered  Fanny  Burney  they  had  at 
least  ferreted  her  out  of  the  obscurity  in  which  she 
wished  to  remain.  But  none  of  their  literary  finds 
seemed  to  them  so  bright  with  promise  as  the  marvellous 
woman  who  sold  milk  from  door  to  door  in  the  unpo- 
etical  town  of  Bristol.  It  was  Miss  More  who  found 
her,  and  who,  with  Mrs.  Montagu,  advertised  her  with 
an  ardour  which  does  more  credit  to  the  quickness  of 
their  sympathies  than  to  the  quickness  of  their  wits. 

In  1783  Miss  More  discovered  that  Ann  Yearsley, 
the  milk-woman  who  called  daily  at  her  house  in 
Bristol  for  kitchen-refuse  with  which  to  feed  her  pig, 
was  accustomed  to  employ  her  leisure  moments  in  the 
composition  of  verses.  She  at  once  took  the  woman 
in  charge,  taught  her  spelling,  and  the  simplest  rules  of 
rhetoric,  and  after  a  lapse  of  some  months  felt  that  her 
pupil  had  made  such  progress  that  she  might  safely 
submit  her  verses  to  bluestocking  judgment.  The 
enthusiasm  with  which  Mrs.  Montagu  and  her  friends 
received  them  is  significant  at  once  of  their  eagerness  to 
assist  the  development  of  poetry  and  of  their  unfitness 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    205 

for  the  task.  Mrs.  Montagu  had  not  believed  in  Wood- 
house,  the  poetical  shoemaker,  but  a  female  Chatterton 
had  more  appeal.     She  wrote  to  Miss  More, 

*  Let  me  come  to  the  wondrous  story  of  the  milk- woman. 
Indeed  she  is  one  of  the  nature's  miracles.  What  force 
of  imagination !  what  harmony  of  numbers !  In 
Pagan  times  one  could  have  supposed  Apollo  had  fallen 
in  love  with  her  rosy  cheek,  snatched  her  to  the  top  of 
Mt.  Parnassus,  given  her  a  glass  of  his  best  heli- 
con, and  ordered  the  nine  muses  to  attend  her  call.' 

This  hypothesis  being  unsuitable  to  a  Christian  age, 
Mrs.  Montagu  suggests  that  the  Scriptures,  the  Psalms, 
and  the  Book  of  Job  in  particular,  may  have  taught 
the  artless  numbers  to  flow ;  whereupon  she  herself  in- 
dulges in  a  flight : 

Avaunt !  grammarians ;  stand  away  !  logicians  ;  far, 
far  away  all  heathen  ethics  and  mythology,  geometry 
and  algebra,  and  make  room  for  the  Bible  and  Milton 
when  a  poet  is  to  be  made.  The  proud  philosopher 
ends  far  short  of  what  has  been  revealed  to  the  simple 
in  our  religion.  Wonder  not,  therefore,  if  our  humble 
dame  rises  above  Pindar  or  steps   beyond  ^schylus.^ 

Mrs.  Montagu  joyfully  promises  her  support. 

The  rest  of  the  blues  were  hardly  less  enthusiastic. 
Old  Mrs.  Delany  circulated  the  milk-woman's  'pro- 
posals' to  print;  ^  Mrs.  Boscawen  sent  in  a  'handsome 
list  of  subscribers' ;  the  Duchess  of  Beaufort  requested 
a  visit  from  Mrs.  Yearsley ;    the  Duchess  of  Portland 

1  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  363 ;   1784. 

*  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Delany  6.  209 ;  22  January  1784. 


206  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

sent  a  twenty-pound  bank-note.  Walpole  gave  her 
money  and  the  works  of  Hannah  More.^  The  Duchess 
of  Devonshire  presented  her  with  an  edition  of  the 
EngHsh  poets.  All  social  London  and  half  of  literary 
London  put  its  name  on  the  list  of  subscribers.  When, 
in  1785,  the  volume  appeared,  it  was  prefaced  by  a 
letter  from  Hannah  More  to  Mrs.  Montagu,  telling 
Mrs.  Yearsley's  story,  and  recommending  her  to  the 
good  attentions  of  Mrs.  Montagu,  whose  delight  'in 
protecting  real  genius'  is  well  known.  Mrs.  Montagu's 
name  was,  indeed,  writ  large  in  the  volume.  In  the 
address.  To  Stella  (Stella  being  the  milk-woman's  name 
for  Hannah  More),  Mrs.  Montagu  is  referred  to  as 

That  bright  fair  who  decks  a  Shakespeare's  urn 
With  deathless  glories. 

Similar  adulation  is  diffused  through  some  seventy 
lines  of  a  blank  verse  poem,  On  Mrs.  Montagu.  A 
passage  from  this  will  serve  as  well  as  anything  to 
illustrate  'Lactilla's  '  powers  : 

Lo !  where  she,  mounting,  spurns  the  stedfast  earth, 

And,  sailing  on  the  cloud  of  science,  bears 

The  banner  of  Perfection.  — 

Ask  Gallia's  mimic  sons  how  strong  her  powers, 

Whom,  flush'd  with  plunder  from  her  Shakespeare's  page, 

Sheswift  detects  amid  their  dark  retreats ; 

(Horrid  as  Cacus  in  their  thievish  dens) 

Regains  the  trophies,  bears  in  triumph  back 

The  pilfer'd  glories  to  a  wond'ring  world. 

So  Stella  boasts,  from  her  the  tale  I  learned ; 

With  pride  she  told  it,  I  with  rapture  heard. 

1  Letters  13.  214;   13  November  1784. 


MRS.  MONTAGU  AS  A  PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS    !207 

Mrs.  Yearsley  was  not  loath  to  address  the  great  in 
verse.  Mr.  Raikes  of  Manchester,  the  founder  of 
Sunday  Schools,  the  Duchess  of  Portland,  and  the 
Author  of  The  Castle  of  Otranto  (genially  referred  to 
as  'the  Honourable  H — e  W — e')  were  all  com- 
memorated. Their  influential  patronage  and  sad  Lac- 
tilla's  melancholy  tale  made  the  volume  immediately 
successful,  and  it  passed  into  a  fourth  edition  in  1786. 
Lactilla  might,  however,  have  been  happier  had 
she  been  less  successful.  There  had  come  to  her,  after 
the  publication  of  her  book,  the  not  inconsiderable  sum 
of  three  hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  which  Hannah 
More  held  in  trust  for  her.  One  is  not  surprised  to 
learn  that  Miss  More  was  cautious  in  paying  out  this 
money  to  Mrs.  Yearsley,  nor  that  this  caution  im- 
pressed the  owner  of  the  money  as  mere  niggardliness. 
A  sharp  quarrel  ensued  which  was  fully  set  forth  by 
both  women,  by  Hannah  More  in  her  letters  to  Mrs. 
Montagu  and  by  the  poetess  in  the  preface  to  her  next 
volume  of  verses.  It  cost  the  poor  milk-woman  all  her 
fine  friends  and  the  fine  reputation  which  they  had 
blown  up  for  her.  She  sank  gradually  from  view,  and 
when  she  died,  in  1806,  was  probably  as  obscure  as 
when  she  was  'discovered'  some  twenty  years  before. 
Had  she  been  of  a  philosophical  temperament,  she 
might  perhaps  have  extracted  some  comfort  from  the 
cynical  reflection  that  her  fall  had  been  well  nigh  as 
humiliating  to  her  discoverers  and  patrons  as  to  herself. 
Walpole  continued  for  months  to  chuckle  over  the  col- 


208  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

lapse  of  her  reputation,  asserting  that,  if  wise,  she 
would  now  put  gin  in  her  milk  and  kill  herself  by  way  of 
attaining  to  an  immortality  like  Chatterton's  ;  ^  but  the 
bluestockings  were  glad  to  forget  the  poor  creature 
and  the  mischief  they  had  done  her,  and  the  pathos  of 
her  latter  state  moved  them  only  to  passionate  descrip- 
tions of  her  ingratitude. 

1  Letters  13.  432;  22  December  1786. 


CHAPTER  XI 

Results 

The  London  salon  did  not  pass  away  without  leaving 
behind  it  serious  criticisms  by  serious  people  who  knew 
it  well.  Thus  Wraxall,  writing  of  Mrs.  Montagu's 
later  assemblies,  asserts  that  the  charm  departed  with 
the  death  of  Johnson,  'who  formed  the  nucleus  round 
which  all  the  subordinate  members  revolved.'  ^  Miss 
More,  in  reference  to  the  same  subject,  says  :  '  The  old 
little  parties  are  not  to  be  had  in  the  usual  style  of 
comfort.  Everything  is  great  and  vast  and  late  and 
magnificent  and  dull.'  ^  At  a  period  much  earlier 
than  this.  Gibbon  made  an  interesting  comparison 
between  French  and  English  society  which  is  worthy 
of  consideration  in  any  attempt  to  judge  the  London 
salon.  Writing  at  Paris,  in  May  1763,  he  says:  'La 
[i.e.  in  London]  on  croit  vous  faire  plaisir  en  vous 
recevant.  Ici  on  croit  s'en  faire  a  soi-meme';^  and 
elsewhere,  '  In  two  months  I  am  acquainted  with  more 
(and  more  agreable)  people,  than  I  knew  in  London  in 
two  years.     Indeed  the  way  of  life  is  quite  different. 

1  Wraxall's  Historical  Memoirs  1.  115. 

2  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  2.  225 ;   April  1790. 

3  Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works  1.  163;  journal  for  May  1763. 

p  209 


210  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Much  less  play,  more  conversation,  and  instead  of  our 
immense  routs,  agreable  societies  where  you  know  and 
are  known  by  almost  every  body  you  meet.'  ^ 

There  may  perhaps  be  something  worth  considering 
in  the  suggestion  that  the  Gallic  temperament  lends 
itself  more  readily  than  the  Saxon  to  the  life  and 
atmosphere  of  salons.  I  have  already  pointed  out  that 
one  characteristic  of  that  life,  by  which,  indeed,  its 
vitality  is  to  be  tested,  is  the  peculiar  nature  of  the 
friendships  between  the  hostess  and  her  author-guest. 
In  London  such  relations  are  found,  but  they  seem 
tame,  cool,  and  unequal.  Passion  is  unknown  in  them. 
It  is  inevitable  that  the  salon,  if  not  the  literature  that 
springs  from  it,  should  suffer  from  this  lack ;  and  this 
contention  cannot  be  dismissed  by  insisting  that  authors 
are  better  off  without  such  questionable  friendships. 
For  better  or  for  worse,  these  made  for  the  production 
of  literature,  and  one  cannot  think  of  the  great  Parisian 
salons  as  existing  without  them. 

But  we  must  go  farther.  The  great  English  authors 
in  general  not  only  declined  to  form  such  intimate 
associations  in  the  salons,  but  looked  on  literary  as- 
semblies with  something  approaching  contempt,  if 
indeed  they  paid  any  attention  whatever  to  them. 
The  attitude  of  Johnson  is  hardly  to  be  thought  of  as 
an  exception  to  this  statement.  After  his  death  he 
was  loudly  claimed  as  a  member  of  the  innermost 
bluestocking  circle,  and  he  was  so  considered  by  more 

>  Private  Letters  of  Gibbon  1.  31 ;   25  March  1763. 


RESULTS  211 

than  one  contemporary.  Miss  More,  for  example, 
in  her  Bas  Bleu  described  Johnson  as  generally  partici- 
pating in  the  assemblies  of  the  bluestockings.  This 
assertion  might  be  quite  misleading,  if  we  did  not  have 
Boswell's  Life  to  correct  the  impression.  The  amount 
of  time  which  Johnson  spent  in  such  assemblies  is 
almost  negligible.  One  smiles  to  think  what  a  tornado 
would  have  burst  from  him,  had  it  been  hinted  to  him 
that  his  literary  activity  was  in  any  way  vitalized  by 
women.  The  attitude  of  other  authors  is  even  clearer. 
Burke  was  admittedly  a  renegade  from  the  salons.^ 
Goldsmith  does  not  appear  to  have  had  dignity  or 
authority  enough  to  interest  the  bluestockings  very 
much.  Sheridan,  who  might  easily  have  shone  in 
salons,  was  pre-occupied  with  dramatic  and  political 
affairs.  Sterne,  Walpole,  and  Gibbon  knew  the  Pari- 
sian salon  too  well  to  have  any  illusions  about  its 
London  offspring.  Approaching  the  matter  from  the 
other  side,  it  must  be  obvious  that  the  salon  could  not 
win  great  distinction  from  those  persons  who  were 
content  to  accept  its  favours  and  submit  to  its  influence. 
Beattie  and  Hannah  More,  the  translator  of  Epictetus 
and  the  translator  of  Sophocles,  and  even  the  author 
of  the  excellent  Cecilia  —  these  were  but  feeble  lumi- 
naries for  an  institution,  which,  if  it  is  to  win  recognition 
at  all,  must  shine  with  a  splendour  that  is  piercing. 

1  See  above,  p.  123.  As  early  as  1769,  Mrs.  Carter  had  long  regretted 
that  he  had  left  'the  tranquil  pleasures  of  select  society  for  the  turbulent 
schemes  of  ambition.'     Letters  to  Mrs.  Montagu  2.  23. 


212  THE  SALON  AND   ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Even  when  all  this  has  been  taken  into  account, 
the  real  question  is  still  to  ask.  Why  did  not  English 
authors  more  generally  seek  the  inspiration  and  assist- 
ance of  this  institution  ?  The  salon  was  not  without 
a  certain  power :  it  was  generous ;  it  had  influence 
with  publishers  and  with  booksellers ;  it  could  bring 
authors  into  pleasant  and  profitable  contact  with  one 
another.  But  despite  all  this,  the  bluestockings  never 
became,  like  their  French  models,  true  disseminators  of 
ideas ;  they  were  never  the  devotees  of  new  and  daring 
philosophies  and  of  radical  transitions.  They  were 
always  on  the  side  of  law  and  order,  and  of  a  conserv- 
ative tradition.  They  stood  for  the  classicism  of 
English  literature.  Now  no  temper  could  have  been 
more  unfortunate  than  this  at  the  moment  when  the 
bluestockings  sought  to  exert  their  influence.  The 
things  which  they  represented  were  already  passing 
away,  and  with  the  things  that  were  coming  to  birth 
they  felt  no  profound  sympathy.  They  did,  it  is  true, 
show  a  certain  interest  in  romanticism,  and  Mrs.  Vesey 
scandalized  her  sisters  by  getting  interested  in  agnos- 
ticism ;  but  the  true  significance  of  these  things  they 
never  guessed.  None  of  them  glimpsed  that  dawn 
in  which  to  be  alive  was  bliss.  They  were  apart  from 
the  whole  current  of  European  literature.  At  the 
moment  when  poets  were  hearkening  to  the  voices  of 
new  gods,  the  bluestockings  were  prolonging  faint 
echoes  of  conservatism ;  at  the  moment  when  poetry 
was  deserting  the  metropolis  and  schools  of  literature 


RESULTS  213 

were  shattering  into  individualism,  they  east  their 
influence  on  the  side  of  a  yet  closer  centralization. 
English  literature  was  about  to  find  its  true  exponents 
in  two  men  who  were  about  as  far  removed  from  the 
influence  of  salons  as  can  well  be  imagined,  the  shy 
recluse  of  Olney,  and  the  passionate  poet  of  the  Low- 
lands. 

Thus  the  salon,  judged  by  classical  models,  must 
be  said  to  have  failed.  It  was  born  out  of  its  due  time. 
Had  the  position  of  woman  in  the  English  literary  world 
permitted  it  to  flower  fifty  years  earlier,  there  might 
have  been  a  different  story  to  tell.  As  it  is,  we  must 
be  content  to  study  it  as  an  interesting  attempt  to 
domesticate  a  foreign  institution  and  as  a  revelation 
of  certain  significant  features  in  English  literary  life. 
Conceived  in  its  strictest  sense,  it  is  difficult  to  claim 
for  the  salon  more  than  this. 

But  there  is  a  freer  sense  in  which  the  whole  move- 
ment may  be  conceived.  We  may  turn  our  eyes  from 
the  bluestockings  and  their  somewhat  tiresome  assem- 
blies to  consider  the  broader  manifestations  of  the  social 
instinct.  The  age  which  we  are  studying  is  unique  in 
English  literature  as  having  struck  out  or  brought  to 
perfection  types  of  literature  which  exist  solely  to 
record  and  celebrate  the  social  life.  That  body  of 
work  is  perhaps  its  most  significant,  and  certainly  its 
most  characteristic,  contribution  to  English  literature. 
It  is  no  idle  speculation  that  sees  in  it  the  working  of 
the  same  spirit  which  tried  to  express  itself  in  the  salon. 


214  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Full  expression  was  reserved  for  this  spirit  in  simpler 
forms  of  social  life,  and  out  of  these  rose  a  body  of 
literature  worthy  to  represent  it.  To  this  truer  mani- 
festation of  the  social  spirit  in  letters  we  now  address 
our  attention. 


PART  III 
THE  SOCIAL  SPIRIT  IN  ENGLISH  LETTERS 


Samuel  Johnson 


From  a  photograph,  preserved  in  the  British  Museum,  of  an  undescribed 
painting,  formerly  attributed  to  Gainsborough 


CHAPTER  XII 

Johnson  and  the  Art  of  Conversation 

Chapters  like  this  usually  begin  with  a  lament. 
The  age  of  conversation,  it  is  proper  to  begin,  is  gone, 
gone  with  the  harpsichord  and  the  minuet  and  the 
long,  leisurely  evenings  when  the  bluestockings  dis- 
cussed literature  and  the  theory  of  equality.  The  rush 
of  modern  life,  one  continues,  has  killed  conversation, 
even  as  the  penny  post  has  killed  the  art  of  letter-writ- 
ing. In  all  this  there  is  much  false  sentiment  and  false 
implication.  It  is  foolish  to  assume  the  existence  of  a 
time  when  talk  was  universally  clever  and  wise.  There 
were  dullards  even  in  1780.  Cards  and  dancing,  then 
as  now,  were  sought  as  a  relief  from  thinking,  and  serious 
talkers  were  not  seldom  voted  a  nuisance.  No  doubt 
they  often  were.  The  bluestockings,  as  we  have  seen, 
sometimes  bored  even  themselves.  The  reputation 
of  the  age  for  conversation  depended  upon  a  few. 

It  is  difficult  to  recover  a  sufiicient  body  of  this  con- 
versation upon  which  to  base  an  opinion.  It  is  a 
much  easier  thing  to  read  about  then  to  get  at.  Plenty 
of  essays  on  conversation  have  been  preserved  —  no 
manual  for  young  ladies  was  without  one  —  but  the 
talk  itself  is  not  so  easy  to  find.     We  have  Chester- 

217 


218  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

field's  advice  to  his  son  on  how  to  shine  in  conversa- 
tion, but  the  record  of  Chesterfield's  own  discourse  is 
little  better  than  a  collection  of  puns  and  bits  of  repar- 
tee, mere  flotsam  and  jetsam.  Cowper  wrote  a  long 
and  rather  dreary  poem  on  colloquial  happiness,  but 
where  is  Cowper's  conversation  ?  Fielding,  too,  wrote 
an  essay  on  the  subject,  but  it  is  a  rather  priggish 
affair  (for  Fielding),  and  the  perusal  of  it  only  fills  us 
with  regret  that  we  must  take  this  poor  substitute  for 
the  brilliant  chatter  that  went  on  about  the  punch- 
bowl. The  scraps  of  talk  casually  embedded  in  works 
on  other  subjects,  the  anecdotes,  jests,  and  bons  mots 
have  lost  with  time  much  of  their  flavour  and  signifi- 
cance, and  give  us  no  adequate  notion  of  the  distinctive 
opinions  held  by  their  authors,  no  grounds  for  large 
general  conclusions  about  them,  and  no  conception  of 
the  general  strain  of  their  talk.  There  is  no  steady 
light  from  these  flashes  of  eloquence  and  wit.  At  most 
they  make  us  regret  what  we  have  lost.  Thus  there  is 
every  reason  to  suppose  ,that  the  conversation  of  Rich- 
ard Brinsley  Sheridan  was  a  model  of  brilliance ;  but 
the  collection  of  his  sayings  recorded  by  Moore  is  quite 
lacking  in  the  grace  of  reality.  These  good  things  are 
without  a  foil ;  they  need  arrangement ;  they  are  mere 
ornaments  adorning  nothing,  a  little  heap  of  unset 
gems. 

To  all  this  there  is  but  one  exception,  the  grand  ex- 
ception of  Bos  well's  record  of  Johnson.  Perhaps  the 
chief  distinction  of  that  record  is  that  it  gives  us  not 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION      219 

only  the  high  lights  in  the  conversation,  not  only  its 
exciting  moments,  but  its  very  longueurs  (as  Horace 
Walpole  objected),  its  ineptitude,  its  occasional  incon- 
clusiveness.  There  is,  therefore,  something  by  which 
the  wit  of  it  all  is  set  off.  It  has  the  ring  of  vitality. 
It  is  to  the  everlasting  credit  of  Boswell  that  he  let  us 
see  the  worst  of  Johnson's  talk,  that,  in  the  words  of 
Hannah  More,  he  'mitigated  none  of  his  asperities,' 
but  gave  us  the  heaviness  as  well  as  the  wit  and  the 
rudeness  as  well  as  the  depth.  We  hear  the  voice  of 
Johnson,  not  a  mere  quotation  of  his  words. 

But  in  spite  of  the  obvious  faults  of  Johnson's 
talk,  it  is  difficult  to  speak  of  it  without  a  continuous 
and  perhaps  offensive  use  of  superlatives.  Age  could 
not  wither  Johnson.  Instead  of  impairing  his  memory, 
time  enriched  it.  The  pomposity  of  his  written  work 
never  impedes  his  quickness  of  wit  in  conversation. 
He  was,  to  be  sure,  fond  of  parading  that  pomposity 
of  style  for  the  amazement  and  amusement  of  his 
hearers,  and  it  is  scarcely  true  to  say  that  he  used  one 
style  in  writing  and  another  in  talking.  It  would  be 
nearer  the  truth  to  say  that,  as  he  grew  older,  he  tended 
to  introduce  more  of  the  ease  of  his  talk  into  his  written 
work.  Sentence  after  sentence  from  the  Lives  of  the 
Poets  might  be  cited  to  show  the  almost  colloquial 
ease  of  his  later  manner,  and  significant  parallels  might 
be  drawn.  Yet  it  is  certain  that  conversation  gave 
more  scope  to  that  aptness  of  homely  illustration  which 
was  his  most  entertaining  gift.     Posterity  is  right  in 


220  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

preferring  Johnson's  conversation  to  his  writings,  for 
while  it  lacks  nothing  in  the  stream  of  thought  and 
finish  of  style  that  distinguish  his  writings,  it  is  dis- 
tinctly superior  in  mother  wit. 

In  the  heat  of  conversation  Johnson  had  a  stimulus 
which  he  never  felt  in  writing,  the  joy  of  personal  con- 
tention. He  admittedly  regarded  conversation  as  a 
contest,  and  was  frankly  contemptuous  of  the  type  of 
man  who,  like  Addison  or  Goldsmith,  was  always  at 
his  best  when  he  was  arguing  alone.  Of  two  men 
talking,  Johnson  asserted,  one  must  always  rise  superior 
to  the  other.  For  himself  he  had  too  much  pride  to 
be  contentedly  submerged  by  the  conversation  of 
others.  Rather  than  be  worsted,  he  would  strike 
below  the  belt,  or,  in  the  words  of  Boswell,  'toss  and 
gore  several  persons.'  He  had  a  rough  and  ready  way 
of  escaping  from  difficulties.  When  Mrs.  Frances 
Brooke  requested  him  to  look  over  her  new  tragedy, 
complaining  that  she  herself  had  no  time  to  revise  it, 
since  she  had  'so  many  irons  in  the  fire,'  the  sage  re- 
plied, 'Why,  then.  Madam,  the  best  thing  I  can  advise 
you  to  do  is  to  put  your  tragedy  along  with  your  irons.' 
'  If  your  company  does  not  drive  a  man  out  of  his  house, 
nothing  will,'  he  said  to  Boswell  because  the  Scotsman 
had  ventured  to  defend  the  Americans.  When  he  got 
the  floor  —  and  by  the  use  of  such  methods  he  got  it 
very  often  —  he  was  not  inclined  to  abandon  it,  and 
the  conversation  became  a  monologue.  Goldsmith, 
who  so  often  had  the  right  in  dispute  and  was,  indeed, 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CON\^ERSATION      221 

one  of  the  wittiest  opponents  Johnson  ever  had,  com- 
plained that  he  was  'for  making  a  monarchy  of  what 
should  be  a  republic'  Even  Boswell  admitted  that 
in  Johnson's  company  men  did  not  so  much  interchange 
conversation  as  listen  to  what  was  said.  But,  what- 
ever lofty  notions  of  conversation  we  may  cherish,  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  it  can  ever  be  a  republic. 
If  the  flow  of  talk  is  to  get  anywhere,  if  it  is  to  reach  a 
conclusion,  it  must  be  confined  within  a  rather  narrow 
channel  or  it  is  certain  to  dissipate  itself.  Johnson 
hated  spattering  talk.  He  censured  Goldsmith  be- 
cause he  was  always  'coming  on  without  knowing  how 
he  was  to  get  off,'  and  asserted  that  he  could  not  talk 
well  because  he  had  made  up  his  mind  about  nothing. 
*  Goldsmith,'  said  he,  'had  no  settled  notions  upon  any 
subject ;  so  he  talked  always  at  random.'  It  was  not 
so  with  Johnson.  He  saw  his  conclusions  and  drove 
straight  towards  them,  scattering  his  opponents  or 
knocking  them  on  the  head  if  they  impeded  him. 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  infer  that  Johnson  was 
a  sort  of  conversational  head-hunter,  or  the  ourang- 
outang  of  the  drawing-room  whom  Macaulay  depicts, 
alternately  howling  and  growling  and  rending  his 
associates  in  pieces  before  our  eyes.  If  we  have  any 
respect  for  the  consistent  testimony  of  his  contempo- 
raries, we  shall  come  to  realize  that  he  talked  somewhat 
unwillingly.  He  had  to  be  drawn  out.  'He  was  like 
the  ghosts,'  said  Tyers.  Nothing  annoyed  him  more 
than  to  be  shown  off.     At  the  famous  Wilkes  dinner,  to 


222  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

which  he  had  been  taken  simply  that  he  might  contend 
with  a  worthy  opponent,  he  was  so  angry  when  he 
reaHzed  what  had  happened  that  he  took  up  a  book, 
*  sat  down  upon  a  widow  seat  and  read,  or  at  least  kept 
his  eye  upon  it  intently  for  some  time,'  exactly  as  upon 
the  very  different  occasion  of  his  first  meeting  with 
Fanny  Burney. 

Because  of  this  lack  of  pliability  in  Johnson,  Boswell 
deserves  far  more  credit  than  he  has  ever  received  for 
his  success  in  making  him  talk,  Boswell,  though  not 
a  profound  thinker,  was  of  a  mind  curious  and  alert. 
He  is  entirely  misjudged  by  those  readers  —  if,  indeed, 
they  are  ever  readers  —  who  join  Macaulay  in  think- 
ing him  a  fool.  Boswell  said  foolish  things,  to  be  sure, 
and  asked  the  foolishest  questions,  as  what  proportion 
of  their  wages  housemaids  might  properly  spend  on 
their  attire,  how  hogs  were  slaughtered  in  the  Tahiti 
Islands,  and  what  Dr.  Johnson  would  do  if  he  were  shut 
up  in  a  tower  alone  with  a  new-born  baby ;  but  under 
the  silliest  of  them  there  is  always  a  keen  experimen- 
talist, an  amused  observer  tickling  a  giant  with  a  straw. 
Boswell  introduced  a  valuable  amount  of  friction  into 
Johnson's  hfe,  arranged  that  he  should  meet  men  whose 
views  were  wholly  opposed  to  his  own,  carried  him  off 
to  dine  with  Whigs,  got  him  to  call  on  Lord  Monboddo 
(who  held  the  most  offensive  opinions  about  primitive 
man),  introduced  him  to  General  Paoli,  and  to  Beattie 
and  Sir  Adam  Fergusson  (of  the  infamous  race  of  Scots), 
and  dragged  him  across  all  Scotland  to  Mull  and  Icom- 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION      223 

kill.  No  one  else  so  mastered  the  art  of  managing  John- 
son as  this  same  wily  Scot.  Mrs.  Thrale  could  not  do 
it.  Neither  Goldsmith  nor  Dr.  Taylor  could  do  it. 
Topham  Beauclerk  might  perhaps  have  done  it,  had 
he  thought  it  worth  while.  Fanny  Burney  had  the 
subtle  combination  of  grace  and  ability  which  appealed 
to  Johnson,  but  was  lacking  in  force.  When  she  at- 
tempted to  show  Johnson  to  her  'Daddy  Crisp,'  or  to 
engage  him  in  conversation  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Greville, 
her  failure  was  conspicuous.  The  great  man's  placid 
self-absorption  gave  a  deeper  offence  than  any  tirade 
could  have  done. 

Johnson  had  at  times  so  serene  a  manner  that,  in 
an  affable  moment,  he  declared  to  Boswell  that  'that 
is  the  happiest  conversation  where  there  is  no  com- 
petition, no  vanity,  but  a  calm,  quiet  interchange  of 
sentiments.'  Such  is  the  general  strain  of  his  conver- 
sation at  Streatham,  as  recorded  by  Miss  Burney.^ 
Here  we  detect  a  playfulness,  even  a  frivolity,  of  manner 
which  is  a  pleasant  contrast  to  the  more  professional 
tone  with  which  Boswell  has  familiarized  us.  There  is 
in  it  no  hint  of  dress  parade.  It  is  a  very  human 
conversation,  containing  most  of  the  faults  that  dis- 
grace our  own.  Johnson  gossips.  He  talks  of  the 
weather ;    he  talks  of  his  friends  behind  their  back  — 

^  Miss  Burney  was  well  aware  of  the  difference  here  noted.  In  talking 
^•ith  Wyndham  of  Johnson's  life  at  Streatham,  she  gave  '  a  httle  history  of 
his  way  of  life  there,  —  his  good  humour,  his  sport,  his  kindness,  his  socia- 
bihty,  and  all  the  many  excellent  qualities  that,  in  the  world  at  large,  were 
by  so  many  means  obscured.'     Diary  3.  477. 


224  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

what  true  comrade  ever  failed  to  do  that  ?  —  and  will 
even  indulge  in  a  bit  of  scandal.  He  talks  of  Sheridan's 
marriage  with  the  beautiful  prima  donna,  Elizabeth 
Linley,  and  of  Goldsmith's  fracas  with  his  Welsh  pub- 
lisher, Evans ;  and  censures  or  defends  Garrick  or 
Foote  as  the  mood  impels.  There  are  even  moments 
when  he  emulates  Goldsmith  and  makes  himself  a 
laughing-stock  for  the  delectation  of  his  friends. 

'Our  roasting,'  he  once  remarked,  when  describing 
the  state  of  his  kitchen,  'is  not  magnificent,  for  we 
have  no  jack.  .  .  .  Small  joints,  I  believe,  they  man- 
age with  a  string,  and  larger  are  done  at  the  tavern. 
I  have  some  thoughts  (with  profound  gravity)  of 
buying  a  jack,  because  I  think  a  jack  is  some  credit 
to  a  house ' 

'Well,'  remarked  Mr.  Thrale,  'but  you'll  have  a 
spit,  too?' 

'No,  sir,  no ;  that  would  be  superfluous;  for  we  shall 
never  use  it ;  and  if  a  jack  is  seen,  a  spit  will  be  pre- 
sumed ! ' 

This  feature  of  the  Johnsonian  manner,  which  might 
almost  be  compared  with  Goldsmith's  fondness  for  the 
role  of  fool,  has  been  generally  overlooked.  One  may 
doubt  whether  even  Boswell  was  more  than  dimly 
aware  of  it.  Yet  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Johnson 
enjoyed  assuming  and  playing  a  part.  He  was  cer- 
tainly not  a  bear,  but  he  enjoyed  playing  the  bear, 
and  hugged  his  victims  to  death  that  the  world  might 
laugh.  It  was  his  peculiar  misfortune  to  play  the  role 
too  well,  as  it  was  Goldsmith's  misfortune  to  play  the 
fool  too  well.     Again,  Johnson  was  assuredly  not  at 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION      225 

heart  a  pompous  man ;  yet  he  could  in  a  moment 
assume  pomposity  and  drop  into  the  role  of  Gargantua. 
But  he  sometimes  created  such  consternation  in  the 
part  that  the  world  did  not  dare  to  laugh.  Thus,  in 
the  trite  old  illustration  of  his  remark  about  Bucking- 
ham's Rehearsal,  he  revised  the  crisp  sentence,  'It  has 
not  wit  enough  to  keep  it  sweet,'  into  the  crazy  pom- 
posity of,  'It  has  not  vitality  enough  to  preserve  it 
from  putrefaction.'  It  is  amazing  that  Macaulay 
and  the  world  of  readers  after  him  could  delude  them- 
selves into  thinking  that  Johnson  was  seriously  attempt- 
ing to  improve  this  sentence.  It  was,  on  the  contrary, 
a  pose  worthy  of  Laurence  Sterne.  It  was  a  favourite 
device  of  a  true  humourist  putting  forth  a  caricature 
of  himself.  Instances  of  it  could  be  multiplied  in- 
definitely. Remarking  on  the  morality  of  the  Beggars' 
Opera,  for  example,  he  said,  'It  may  have  some  influ- 
ence for  evil  by  making  the  character  of  a  rogue  familiar, 
and  in  some  degree  pleasing ' ;  then  with  the  familiar 
shift  of  style,  'There  is  in  it  such  a  lahefactation  of  all 
principles  as  to  be  injurious  to  morality.'  Gibbon 
and  Cambridge,  who  were  present,  could  regard  this 
stylistic  somersault  as  an  attempt  at  critical  dignity, 
and  even  Boswell  felt  that  he  must  smother  his  mirth. 
Fanny  Burney,  had  she  been  there,  would,  I  imagine, 
have  smiled  confidently  in  Johnson's  face,  for  she 
appreciated  this  aspect  of  his  talk  better  than  others. 
It  is  to  her  that  we  owe  Johnson's  delicious  criticism 
of  his  pensioners,  and,  in  particular  of  the  mysterious 

Q 


v^ 


226  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Miss  Poll  Carmichael :  '  I  could  make  nothing  of  her ; 
she  was  wiggle-waggle,  and  I  could  never  persuade  her 
to  be  categorical.' 

But  however  dull  the  eighteenth  century  may  have 
been  in  apprehending  this  type  of  humour,  it  did  full 
justice  to  the  more  serious  side  of  Johnson's  conversa- 
tion. It  was  chiefly  impressed,  as  every  age  must  be, 
with  the  scope  and  versatility  of  the  man's  mind.  It  is 
of  course  the  merest  platitude  to  remark  that  Johnson's 
conversation  is  characterized  by  breadth  of  interest 
and  accuracy  of  information  ;  yet,  like  many  platitudes, 
it  is  essential  to  an  examination  of  the  subject.  It  is 
most  significant  of  the  man  and  of  the  age  in  which  he 
lived  —  so  far  removed  from  the  narrowness  of  our 
own  age  of  specialization  —  simply  to  turn  the  pages  of 
Boswell's  Life  and  note  the  number  of  topics  upon 
which  Johnson  talked  with  that  easy  mastery  which 
distinguishes  the  scholar  and  philosopher  from  the 
promiscuously  well-informed  man  of  the  world.  Take, 
for  example,  the  topics  touched  upon  in  a  dozen  con- 
secutive pages  of  the  book,  chosen  at  random  ;  evidence 
for  supernatural  appearances,  the  Roman  Church, 
the  thirty-nine  articles  of  the  Church  of  England,  the 
Royal  Marriage  Bill,  the  respect  due  to  old  families, 
the  art  of  mimicry,  the  word  civilisation  ('shop'  was 
evidently  not  an  excluded  topic),  vitriol,  the  question. 
Was  there  one  original  language  ?  the  relation  of  Erse 
to  Irish,  the  rights  of  schoolmasters,  in  the  infliction 
of  punishment,  the  Lord  Chancellors,  the  Scotch  accent. 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION      227 

the  future  state  of  the  soul,  prayers  for  the  dead,  the 
poet  Gray,  Akenside,  Elwal  the  heretic,  the  question, 
Is  marriage  natural  to  man  ?  (it  seems  that  it  is  not) , 
the  philosophy  of  beauty,  swearing,  the  philosophy  of 
biography,  the  proper  use  of  riches,  the  philosophy  of 
philanthropy.  Here  surely  is  a  sufficiently  varied 
list.  But  no  mere  enumeration  can  give  any  notion 
of  the  novelty  of  Johnson's  thinking.  His  remarks 
are  no  echo,  no  quotation.  They  are  the  natural 
up-welling  of  an  original  mind,  showing  us  that  Johnson 
was  a  philosopher ;  but  they  also  reveal  a  fund  of 
accurate  detail  and  an  ability  to  quote  chapter  and 
verse,  showing  us  that  Johnson  was  a  scholar.  These 
two  offices  may  be  quickly  illustrated  from  the  topics 
enumerated  above.  When  Boswell  introduced  the 
subject  of  the  future  state  of  the  soul,  he  made  the 
highly  conventional  observation  that  'one  of  the  most 
pleasing  thoughts  is  that  we  shall  see  our  friends 
again.'     Whereupon  Johnson  replied  : 

Yes,  Sir ;  but  you  must  consider,  that  when  we  are 
become  purely  rational,  many  of  our  friendships  will 
be  cut  off.  Many  friendships  are  formed  by  a  com- 
munity of  sensual  pleasures :  all  these  will  be  cut  off. 
We  form  many  friendships  with  bad  men,  because  they 
have  agreeable  qualities;  and  they  can  be  useful  to  us ; 
but,  after  death,  they  can  no  longer  be  of  use  to  us. 
We  form  many  friendships  by  mistake,  imagining  peo- 
ple to  be  different  from  what  they  really  are.  After 
death,  we  shall  see  every  one  in  a  true  light.  Then, 
Sir,  they  talk  of  our  meeting  our  relations :  but  then 
all  relationship  is  dissolved ;    and  we  shall  have  no 


228  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

regard  for  one  person  more  than  another,  but  for  their 
real  value.  However,  we  shall  either  have  the  satis- 
faction of  meeting  our  friends,  or  be  satisfied  without 
meeting  them. 

There  is  Johnson  the  philosopher.  Five  minutes  later, 
Boswell  was  saying,  *I  have  been  told  that  in  the 
Liturgy  of  the  Episcopal  Church  of  Scotland,  there 
was  a  form  of  prayer  for  the  dead,'  to  which  Johnson 
replied,  '  Sir,  it  is  not  in  the  liturgy  which  Laud  framed 
for  the  Episcopal  Church  of  Scotland ;  if  there  is  a 
liturgy  older  than  that,  I  should  be  glad  to  see  it.' 
There  is  Johnson  the  scholar. 

It  would  be  rash  to  assert  that  Johnson  was  always 
on  safe  ground,  and  ludicrous  to  assert  that  he  was 
always  right.  He  enjoyed  a  random  shot  at  the  truth 
as  well  as  any  other  man  whose  chief  interest  is  in  the 
vitality  of  his  thinking  rather  than  in  the  literalness 
of  his  conclusions ;  but  it  was  a  diversion  which  he 
seldom  permitted  to  others,  and  a  tendency  in  himself 
which  was  generally  restrained  by  the  specialists  about 
him.  Here  we  have  a  truly  formative  element  in  the 
social  life  of  the  time. 

But  no  man  of  the  eighteenth  century  could  hold  his 
hearers  simply  by  the  display  of  a  wealth  of  information. 
Brilliancy  of  manner  was  as  indispensable  as  breadth 
of  mind.  'Weight  without  lustre  is  lead,'  wrote  Lord 
Chesterfield.  No  good  talker  was  without  a  superfi- 
cial attraction.  Garrick  was  noted  for  the  histrionic 
quality,  Beauclerk  for  acidity,  and  Goldsmith  for  Irish 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION      229 

humour.  Johnson's  conversation,  from  the  inner  fire 
of  it,  was  for  ever  sparkling  into  wit  and  epigram.  Yet 
he  never  made  the  mistake  of  serving  his  friends  with 
nothing  but  epigrams,  which  is  very  Hke  serving 
one's  guests  with  nothing  but  hors  d'aeuvres.  Epigram 
stimulates  the  appetite,  but  does  not  satisfy  it,  and  will 
not  do  for  a  steady  diet.  It  is  with  Johnson,  however, 
something  more  than  a  mannerism.  It  was  the  form 
that  lent  itself  best  to  the  expression  of  his  critical 
faculty.  An  examination  of  Johnson's  literary  criticism 
will  reveal  the  fact  that  his  method  is  prevailingly 
sententious  and  summary.  He  was  impatient  of  a 
long  and  slow  development  of  thought,  nor  did  he 
'wind  into'  a  subject,  like  Burke.  In  reading  the 
Lives  of  the  Poets,  we  do  not  feel  that  matters  are  gradu- 
ally illuminated,  but  that  they  are  revealed  by  sudden 
flashes.  If  his  criticism  offends,  it  is  usually  because 
it  is  a  final  pronouncement  and  is  too  summary  to 
be  adequate.  When  he  attempts  an  orderly  criti- 
cism of  details,  the  method,  though  more  elaborate, 
is  usually  less  satisfying.  He  is  at  his  best  when  he  is 
most  crisp  and  dogmatic  :  '  If  Pope  be  not  a  poet,  where 
is  poetry  to  be  found  ? '  '  Dryden  is  read  with  frequent 
astonishment,  and  Pope  with  perpetual  delight.'  '  His 
page,'  he  says  of  Addison,  'is  always  luminous,  but 
never  blazes  in  unexpected  splendour.'  The  value  of 
Johnson's  criticism  consists  in  such  sentences  as  these, 
not  in  longer  passages  of  sustained  comment  like  the 
analysis  of  Gray's  Bard. 


230  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Now  whatever  charm  or  power  there  is  in  such  a 
method  is  found  also  in  Johnson's  conversation.  There 
is  the  same  pointed  style,  the  same  finality  of  tone,  and 
often  the  same  irritating  quality  :  'No  man,'  said  he  of 
Goldsmith,  'was  more  foolish  when  he  had  not  a  pen 
in  his  hand,  or  more  wise  when  he  had.'  'That  man 
[Lyttelton]  sat  down  to  write  a  book  to  tell  the  world 
what  the  world  had  all  his  life  been  telling  him.'  'All 
theory  is  against  the  freedom  of  the  will ;  all  experience 
for  it.'  'In  republics  there  is  not  a  respect  for  author- 
ity, but  a  fear  of  power.'  Many  profess  to  dislike 
such  an  epigrammatic  style  as  this ;  but  I  incline  to 
think  that  those  who  protest  most  loudly  against  such 
dicta  are  those  who  are  least  capable  of  thinking  them 
out.  At  any  rate,  if  they  accomplished  no  more,  such 
statements  gave  something  to  attack,  and  the  desire 
to  demolish  is  of  the  very  soul  of  conversation. 

Those  who  are  offended  by  such  a  conversational 
method  might  attack  it  more  effectively  by  pointing 
out  that  it  was  often  employed  to  startle  rather  than  to 
instruct.  Johnson  felt  the  normal  human  desire  to 
shock  people,  and  indulged  to  the  full  his  transitory 
moods.  'Rousseau,' he  would  exclaim,  'is  a  very  bad 
man.  I  should  like  to  have  him  work  in  the  planta- 
tions!' 'I  am  willing  to  love  all  mankind,  except  an 
American.*  In  a  fit  of  petulance  he  even  quoted  with 
approval  the  ridiculous  remark,  'For  anything  I  can 
see,  foreigners  are  fools.'  There  is  no  deliberation  in 
such  words;   it  is,  in  truth,  hardly  fair  to  quote  them. 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION      231 

At  any  rate,  they  are  entirely  misleading  when  taken 
out  of  their  setting ;  for  it  is  the  charm  of  conversation 
that  it  is  not  deliberate,  and  that  a  talker  may  dare  to 
have  a  prejudice  as  well  as  an  opinion.  A  good  talker 
will  '  paint  a  man  highly '  for  the  mere  love  of  painting. 
Voltaire  and  all  free  talkers  with  him  are  guilty  of  the 
same  excesses.  Madame  Necker  tells  us  that  in  lis- 
tening to  Voltaire  it  was  necessary  to  distinguish  the 
statements  that  were'  truly  characteristic  of  the  man 
from  those  which  were  dictated  by  the  passing  mood 
and  were  no  more  than  the  verite  du  moment.  It  is  the 
peculiar  office  of  conversation  thus  to  give  the  whole 
man,  with  all  his  faults  upon  his  head,  all  his  lapses 
from  sense  and  self-consciousness,  all  his  irrationalities 
and  inconsistencies :  it  is  these  things  that  show  that 
he  is  human.  It  was  Johnson  himself  who  remarked 
that  in  conversation  'you  never  get  a  system.'  Let  us 
be  grateful  that  it  is  so.  A  'unified'  person,  a  man 
whose  mind  is  governed  by  a  system,  cannot  converse ; 
he  can  only  lecture.  His  thoughts  flow  like  a  canal, 
not  like  a  river.  He  is  really  the  most  limited  of  men, 
for  he  must  live  within  his  system  as  he  lives  within 
his  income.  It  is  the  glory  of  Johnson's  conversation 
that  you  cannot  make  a  system  out  of  it.  For  a 
system  you  must  go  to  the  Rambler  or  The  Vanity  of 
Human  Wishes. 

But  this  is  not  to  say  that  Johnson  had  no  con- 
versational principles  or  that  he  uttered  thoughts 
merely    because    they    were    novel.     His    'stream    of 


232  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

mind '  —  to  use  one  of  his  own  phrases  —  was  free, 
but  it  was  not  therefore  without  a  very  definite  trend. 
Like  a  stream  again,  he  drew  constantly  upon  his 
sources,  certain  general  conclusions  about  life,  which 
really  control  his  conversation.  He  himself  declared 
that  general  principles  were  not  to  be  had  from  a  man's 
talk,  but  from  books.  Certainly  this  dictum  does  not 
apply  to  his  own  talk,  for  general  principles  are  obvious 
enough  in  it.  It  is  quite  evident  that  we  are  listening  to 
a  man  who  has  made  up  his  mind  about  life  and  about 
what  is  worth  while.  If,  unlike  Goldsmith,  he  talked 
well  in  public,  it  was  because,  like  Imlac,  he  had  thought 
well  in  private.  It  is  his  constant  custom  to  bring  the 
casual  topic  immediately  into  the  realm  of  general 
principles,  and  thus  the  talk  about  a  particular  subject 
becomes  a  philosophy  of  it.  Boswell  realized  this,  and 
introduced  topic  after  topic  in  order  to  get  it  cleared 
up  once  for  all.  'I  ivished  to  have  it  settled,'  he  says, 
'whether  duelling  was  contrary  to  the  laws  of  Chris- 
tianity.' He  always  felt  that  Johnson  could  have 
settled  the  whole  matter  of  necessity  and  freewill,  if 
only  he  had  been  willing  to  talk  about  it.  Of  a  lady 
talking  with  Johnson  of  the  resurrection  body,  he 
naively  remarks,  'She  seemed  desirous  of  knowing 
more,  but  he  left  the  question  in  obscurity.'  Such  is 
his  confidence  in  his  master's  method. 

It  is  always  profitable  to  delve  through  Johnson's 
talk  to  the  philosophy  that  underlies  it ;  but  not 
unfrequently  he  spares  us  the  trouble  by  enunciating 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION     233 

the  principle  himself.  Thus  when  the  subject  of  gam- 
ing arose,  he  pronounced  as  follows : 

Sir,  I  do  not  call  a  gamester  a  dishonest  man ;  but 
I  call  him  an  unsocial  man,  an  unprofitable  man.  Gam- 
ing is  a  mode  of  transferring  property  without  pro- 
ducing any  intermediate  good.  Trade  gives  employ- 
ment to  numbers,  and  so  produces  intermediate  good. 

Whether  this  doctrine  be  economically  sound  I  do  not 
know ;  but  it  is  plainly  a  doctrine.  He  delighted  in  such 
formulation  of  principles.  Thus  when  Hume's  state- 
ment that  all  who  are  happy  are  equally  happy  was 
quoted  to  him,  he  replied  with  a  definition  of  happiness  : 

Sir,  that  all  who  are  happy  are  equally  happy  is  not 
true.  A  peasant  and  a  philosopher  may  be  equally 
satisfied,  but  not  equally  happy.  Happiness  consists 
in  a  multiplicity  of  agreeable  consciousness.  A  peasant 
has  not  capacity  for  having  equal  happiness  with  a 
philosopher. 

In  like  manner,  he  deduced  principles  of  aesthetics 
from  a  teacup,  and  demolished  the  theory  of  equality 
by  inviting  the  footman  to  sit  down  and  dine. 

But  Johnson's  conversation  is  more  than  a  reductio 
ad  principia,  as  it  is  more  than  epigram  and  more  than 
information.  Philosophic  in  method,  it  was  creative  in 
effect.  It  fertilized  other  minds,  and  attained  to  new 
life  long  after  it  was  uttered  and  forgotten.  Johnson 
cannot  be  measured  by  one  who  reads  only  his  writings, 
but  he  can  be  measured  by  one  who  reads  only  his 
conversation.     Thus  his  work  is  linked  with  that  of 


234  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

men  who  have  accomplished  more  by  the  spoken  word 
than  by  the  written  thought,  so  that,  on  the  one  hand, 
it  has  its  place  in  the  history  of  table-talk,  like  that  of 
Selden  and  Coleridge,  and,  on  the  other,  typifies  the 
relation  of  society  and  letters  at  its  best.  By  the 
dynamic  force  of  his  conversation  Johnson  developed 
men,  he  woke  in  them  powers  of  which  they  did  not 
know  themselves  to  be  possessed,  and  raised  them  to 
higher  levels  of  attainment  than  his  own.  Men  listened 
to  him  with  rage  or  with  wonder,  as  the  Hebrews  to  a 
prophet  and  the  Romans  to  a  Sibyl,  and  they  scoffed 
or  recorded  according  to  their  mood.  Of  much  of 
this  Johnson  was,  fortunately,  unconscious.  He  re- 
garded his  books  as  his  chief  influence  upon  the  world. 
'Now,  Sir,'  said  he,  'the  good  I  can  do  by  my  conver- 
sation bears  the  same  relation  to  the  good  I  can  do  by 
my  writings  that  the  practice  of  a  physician  retired  to 
a  small  country  town,  does  to  his  practice  in  a  great 
city.'  But  Boswell  saw  more  clearly.  'To  me,'  he 
said,  'his  conversation  seemed  more  remarkable  than 
even  his  writings.'  When,  in  1776,  Boswell  returned 
to  Johnson's  side,  he  felt  at  once  the  electric  force. 
'I  felt  myself  elevated  as  if  brought  into  another  state 
of  being,'  he  wrote ;  and  said  to  Mrs.  Thrale, '  I  am  quite 
restored  by  him,  by  transfusion  of  mind.'  The  cynical 
will  of  course  dismiss  this  as  a  spasm  of  hero-worship ; 
but  it  is  more  than  that.  No  one  will  be  inclined  to 
accuse  Edmund  Burke  of  worshipping  Johnson,  yet 
he  remarked  :  '  To  the  conversation  of  this  truly  great 


JOHNSON  AND  THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION      235 

man  I  am  proud  to  acknowledge  tliat  I  owe  the  best 
part  of  my  education.'  Orme  the  historian  remarked 
that  in  conversation  Johnson  gave  one  either  'new 
thoughts  or  a  new  colouring.'  Testimony  of  an  even 
more  striking  character  may  be  quoted  from  Reynolds. 
Speaking  of  his  own  Discourses  on  Art,  Reynolds  said : 

Whatever  merit  they  have  must  be  imputed,  in  a 
great  measure,  to  the  education  which  I  may  be  said  to 
have  had  under  Dr.  Johnson.  I  do  not  mean  to  say, 
though  it  would  certainly  be  to  the  credit  of  these 
Discourses  if  I  could  say  it  with  truth,  that  he  contrib- 
uted even  a  single  sentiment  to  them  :  but  he  quali- 
fied my  mind  to  think  justly.  .  .  .  The  observations 
which  he  made  on  poetry,  on  life,  and  on  everything 
about  us,  I  applied  to  our  art. 

Those  who  heard  the  conversation  of  Johnson  may 
be  said  to  have  witnessed  literature  in  the  making. 
At  any  rate,  Johnson's  talk  became  literature  by  the 
simple  fact  of  being  recorded.  It  is  the  best  example 
that  can  be  given  of  the  fusion  of  the  literary  life  with 
the  social,  and  brought  to  bear  the  same  kind  of  influ- 
ence which  the  salons  were  trying  to  exert.  It  was 
destined  to  give  Johnson  his  distinctive  place  in  the 
literature.  It  was  regarded,  and  properly,  by  Boswell 
as  constituting  the  peculiar  value  of  his  Life  of  Johnson, 
and  as  it  was  the  chief  inspiration,  so  it  remains  the 
chief  attraction  of  that  remarkable  book. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Walpole  and  the  Art  of  Familiar  Correspondence 

The  golden  age  of  English  letter-writing  arrived 
without  a  period  of  long  and  painful  preparation. 
With  the  more  rudimentary  correspondence  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  new  art  had  but  the  slightest  rela- 
tions, appearing  in  full  bloom  almost  as  soon  as  it 
appeared  at  all.  There  was  of  course  much  in  Eng- 
land to  encourage  it.  It  is  significant,  for  example, 
that  the  era  of  letter-writing  was  coincident  with  the 
production  of  large  numbers  of  novels  in  letter-form, 
which  made  the  art  the  vehicle  of  a  new  realism,  and 
thus  helped  to  spread  the  popularity  of  both  types 
at  once.  Again,  the  era  was  also  that  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  salons  and  of  the  art  of  conversation,  a 
coincidence  which  is  duplicated  in  the  literary  history 
of  France.^  Letter- writing,  considered  as  a  familiar 
art  —  and  we  have  no  concern  with  its  other  aspects 
—  is  but  written  conversation,  a  sort  of  tete-a-tete, 
with  the  talking,  for  the  moment,  all  one  side.  It  is 
dominated  by  a  smiling  intimacy,  and  it  is  this  note 

^  'Cette  litterature  devait  briller  des  le  dix-septieme  siecle,  puisque  des 
lors  se  forme  et  se  propage  en  France  I'esprit  de  societe.  .  .  .  Avant  cet 
&ge,  en  France  du  moins,  les  salons  n'existent  pas.'  P.  de  Julleville's  His- 
toire  de  la  Litterature  Frangaise  5.  600. 

236 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE     237 

which  one  feels  to  be  a  new  thing  in  the  correspondence 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  note  which  is  heard  but 
seldom  in  the  letters  of  an  earlier  period.  The  models 
of  the  new  style  were,  in  fact,  not  English.  When 
Chesterfield  was  choosing  exemplars  for  his  son,  he 
took  no  account  of  English  letter-writers ;  he  cites 
Cicero  and  Cardinal  d'Ossat  as  models  for  serious  cor- 
respondence, and  then  adds  :  '  For  gay  and  amusing 
letters,  for  enjouement  and  badinage,  there  are  none  that 
equal  Comte  Bussy's  and  Madame  Sevigne's.  They 
are  so  natural  that  they  seem  to  be  the  extempore  con- 
versation of  two  people  of  wit  rather  than  letters. 
I  would  advise  you  to  let  that  book  be  one  of  your 
itinerant  library.'  ^  The  regard  for  Madame  de  Sevigne 
was  well-nigh  universal.  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu, 
who  probably  found  her  too  womanly,  is  almost  alone 
in  her  dislike.  Thomas  Gray  has  been  said  to  imitate 
her.^  Fanny  Burney,  who  had  read  her  from  the  days 
of  her  youth,  considered  her  'almost  all  that  can  be 
wished  to  form  female  perfection,'  felt  attached  to  her  as 
though  she  were  alive  and  in  the  same  room,  and  longed 
to  run  into  her  arms.^  Mrs.  Boscawen  created  an 
almost  national  sensation  by  circulating  a  rumour  of 
the  discovery  in  France  of  five  hundred  new  letters 
of  Madame  de  Sevigne.  All  the  blues  were  in  a  flutter 
over  it.     Mrs.  Montagu  wrote  to  Hannah  More  that 

^  Letters,  ed.  Bradshaw,  1.  55. 

^  Memoirs  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  2.  172. 

'  Diary  of  Madame  D' Arhlay  2.  266. 


238  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

the  truth  of  the  matter  would  be  evident  at  once  upon 
pubHcation,  since  Madame  de  Sevigne's  style  was  'of 
all  things  the  most  inimitable.'  ^  Miss  More  yielded 
to  none  in  her  admiration,  and  in  one  of  her  happiest 
phrases  compares  her  to  a  'master  sketching  for  his 
own  amusement.'  But  all  this  admiration  is  as  nothing 
compared  with  the  worship  which  Walpole  gave  the 
French  writer.  'My  dear  Madame  de  Sevigne,'  he 
calls  her,  'that  divine  woman,'  'my  saint,'  and  'Notre 
Dame  de  Livry.'  He  collected  relics  of  her  with  a 
fervour  fairly  religious,  and  enshrined  them  under  her 
portrait.  The  cult  became  a  jest  among  his  friends. 
Madame  du  Deffand  sent  him  a  snuff-box,  with  the 
likeness  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  painted  upon  it,  and 
wrote  a  letter  as  from  the  lady  herself  to  accompany 

the  gift : 

Des  champs  Elisees. 
(Point  de  succession  de  tems ;  point  de  date.) 
Je  connois  votre  folle  passion  pour  moi ;  votre 
enthousiasme  pour  mes  lettres,  votre  veneration  pour 
les  lieux  que  j'ai  habites  :  J'ai  appris  le  culte  que  vous 
m'y  avez  rendu  :  j'en  suis  si  penetree  que  j'ai  sollicite 
et  obtenu  la  permission  de  mes  Souverains  de  vous 
venir  trouver  pour  ne  vous  quitter  jamais.  J'aban- 
donne  sans  regret  ces  lieux  fortunes ;  je  vous  prefere  a 
tons  ses  habitans  :  jouissez  du  plaisir  de  me  voir ;  ne 
vous  plaignez  point  que  ce  ne  soit  qu'en  peinture  ;  c'est 
la  seule  existence  que  puissent  avoir  les  ombres.  .  .  .^ 

When  people  bored  Walpole  with  talk  of  Shakespeare 
and  Swift,  he  would  set  his  thoughts  upon  Madame 

^  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  2.  26;  cf.  Walpole's  Letters  14.  65  et  passim. 
*  Letters  7.  9-10. 


THE  ART  OF  FA^HLIAR  CORRESPONDENCE    239 

de  Sevigne  ^  as  a  monk  takes  refuge  in  holy  meditation. 
'If  she  could  have  talked  nonsense,'  he  cries,  'I  should, 
like  any  other  bigot,  believe  she  was  inspired.'  ^ 

Worshipping  her  thus,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he 
should  have  been,  even  in  his  own  day,  compared  to 
her.^  He  affected  to  regard  such  praise  as  blasphemy  ; 
but,  though  he  was  in  all  probability  secretly  pleased, 
he  was  too  great  an  artist  in  his  own  way  not  to  realize 
that  there  was  a  difference  between  him  and  the  goddess 
of  his  idolatry.  It  is  typical  of  this  difference  that  one 
thinks  instinctively  of  Walpole  as  the  'prince  of  letter- 
writers  '  and  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  as  a  friend.  Wal- 
pole was  too  strongly  individualist  to  be  quite  the 
'perfect  medium'  that  we  find  in  the  marquise.  We 
are  conscious  of  his  cleverness,  his  prejudices,  his  dis- 
tortions, his  rank  and  snobbishness.  We  think  of 
Walpole  as  often  as  we  think  of  Walpole's  news.  His 
art  is  not,  however,  the  less  perfect,  but  only  different 
in  method.  He  does  not,  like  Madame  de  Sevigne, 
simply  transmit  the  light,  but  stains  and  fractures 
it  so  that  it  glows  with  a  confusion  of  colours  and 
flashing  rays.  Walpole  could  never  have  attained  to 
the  pearl-like  perfection  of  Madame  de  Sevigne.  If  we 
must  needs  deal  in  parallels,  we  shall  find  a  much  closer 
one  between  Madame  de  Sevigne  and  William  Cowper. 

1  lb.  5.  87. 

2  76.  6.  356. 

'  Madame  Necker  asserted  that  he  was  '  as  like  Madame  de  Sevigne  as 
two  peas.'  Letters  10.  80.  Horace  Mann  had  noticed  the  similarity 
many  years  before.     lb.  2.  410. 


240  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

The  recluse  of  Olney,  like  the  Lady  of  Livry,  had  caught 
the  secret  of  the  unpremeditated  art.  Walpole  —  like 
the  prince  that  he  is  —  is  almost  never  free  from  a  sense 
of  his  rank. 

I  am  tempted  to  say  that  this  self-consciousness  of 
Walpole  is  an  art  in  itself.  He  enjoys  displaying 
various  sides  of  himself,  plays  with  his  prejudices, 
exaggerates  all  his  enthusiasms  and  all  his  dislikes, 
affects  to  be  old  and  look  back  over  a  vista  of  years, 
jests  about  his  gout  and  the  infallible  bootikins,  pre- 
tends to  believe  that  the  country  is  going  to  the  dogs, 
and  takes  refuge  at  Strawberry  Hill  among  his  cats 
and  his  cameos.  There  are  moments  when  he  is  as 
full  of  humours  as  Charles  Lamb.  Throughout  three 
thousand  letters  his  sprightliness,  that  subtle  union 
of  wit  and  grace,  is  hardly  once  at  fault ;  everything 
seems  to  contribute  to  it.  Does  he  cross  the  Channel 
in  rough  weather  ?  He  is  drowned  without  being  ship- 
wrecked. He  has  a  'lap  full  of  waves,'  is  'washed  from 
head  to  foot  in  the  boat  at  ten  o'clock  at  night,'  and 
plunged  into  the  sea  up  to  his  knees.  'Qu'avois-je  a 
faire  dans  cette  galere  ?  In  truth,  it  is  a  little  late  to  be 
seeking  adventures.'  ^  Condemned  to  a  state  of  eternal 
emaciation,  none  shall  outdo  him  in  the  description 
of  his  leanness:  he  is  'emaciated,  wan,  wrinkled,'  a 
'poor  skeleton,'  a  'thinner  Don  Quixote.'  Nor  is  he 
surpassed  (even  by  Macaulay)  in  his  account  of  the 
'tinsel  glories'  of  Strawberry  Hill.     He  would  certainly 

1  Letters  7.  137 ;   13  October  1767. 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE     241 

have  been  the  first  to  call  himself  a  snob,  had  he  known 
the  word,  or  had  it  occurred  to  him  to  invent  it.  Mean- 
while he  made  no  pretence  of  concealing  his  boredom 
with  most  things  in  heaven  and  earth  :  to  three-quarters 
of  the  world  he  displayed  only  a  polished  indifference ; 
most  of  the  rest  of  it  he  openly  despised,  but  it  was  that 
he  might  have  the  more  attention  for  the  few  whom  he 
found  worth  while.  His  career  in  the  Parisian  salons, 
which  has  been  already  described,  his  repudiation  of  the 
philosophes  and  the  complete  absorption  of  his  interest 
in  Madame  du  Deffand,  are  really  typical  of  the  man 
and  of  his  entire  career.  If  to  be  loyal  through  life  to 
a  few  friends,  to  expend  one's  genius  in  giving  them 
delight  —  '  spreading  one's  leaf  gold  over  them  and 
making  them  shine '  —  is  to  be  a  snob,  then  Walpole 
richly  deserves  the  name. 

There  is  no  lack  of  naturalness  in  Walpole's  relations 
with  his  friends.  He  always  'lets  himself  go,'  to  a 
degree,  indeed,  that  is  surprising  when  one  recalls  that 
he  knew  all  along  that  his  letters  would  one  day  be 
printed.  Like  Johnson,^  he  feared  the  press,  which,  he 
says,  '  exceeds  even  the  day  of  Judgement,  for  it  brings 
to  light  everybody's  faults,  and  a  good  deal  more.'  ^ 
He  was  in  nervous  dread  that  his  letters  to  Madame  du 
Deffand  would  get  into  print,  and  made  the  poor  lady 
wretched  by  harping  upon  his  fear ;  on  the  other  hand, 
he  himself  collected  and  prepared  certain  of  his  letters 
for  print ;   and  yet,  in  spite  of  all  this,  there  is  nothing 

»  Boswell's  Life  4.  102.  2  Letters  8.  427;  23  February  1774. 

B 


242  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

of  restraint  in  his  style  or  of  caution  in  his  words. 
He  never  sues  for  the  good  opinion  of  posterity  by 
adopting  a  judicial  tone,  but  is  always  delightfully 
himself.  He  knew  that  his  letters  to  Sir  Horace  Mann, 
which  extend  through  forty -five  years  with  hardly  a 
break,  would  one  day  be  an  invaluable  record  of  public 
events,^  and  was  concerned  that  it  should  be  kept 
intact ;  yet  for  all  that  he  is  never  betrayed  into  the 
manner  of  the  archivist.  So  strong,  indeed,  is  Wal- 
pole's  individualism,  so  wayward  his  humour,  that  it  is 
sometimes  rash  to  use  his  letters  as  documentary 
evidence. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  species  of  literature  more 
exposed  to  misinterpretation  than  the  familiar  letter. 
It  may  almost  be  stated  as  a  general  law  of  the  species 
that  in  proportion  as  a  letter  is  suited  for  print  and  for 
public  reading,  it  is  a  poor  thing.  A  letter  is,  by 
its  very  nature,  not  addressed  to  an  audience,  but  to  an 
individual ;  and  as  certainly  as  it  becomes  general  in 
its  appeal,  it  loses  that  intimacy  of  tone  which  is  its 
peculiar  charm.  What  is  duller  than  an  'open  letter'  ? 
What  is  more  chilling  than  a  postscript  which  invites 
you,  when  you  have  read  a  letter,  to  pass  it  on  to  John 
and  to  Mary  .5^     Not  there  shall  you  find  anything  of 

*  These  letters  he  prepared  for  the  press  after  they  had  been  returned  to 
him  by  Mann.  In  August  1784  he  wrote :  '  I  have  been  countiiig  how  many 
letters  I  have  written  to  you  since  I  landed  in  England  in  1741 :  they  amount 
—  astonishing !  —  to  above  eight  hundred ;  and  we  have  not  met  in  three- 
and-forty  years !  A  correspondence  of  near  half  a  century  is,  I  suppose, 
not  to  be  paralleled  in  the  annals  of  the  post  oflBce ! '     Letters  13.  182. 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE     243 

that  conversation  apart  which  constitutes  the  joy  of 
writing  as  of  reading  letters.  The  letter  which  is 
intelligible  to  everybody  is  already  impersonal  and 
almost  professional  in  tone,  and  you  may  print  it  with 
impunity ;  but  a  letter  which  is  addressed  to  a  friend 
will,  in  proportion  to  its  intimacy,  teem  with  allusions, 
oddities  of  phrase,  and  obscure  references  which  make 
full  sense  only  to  the  recipient,  and  you  will  print  it 
at  your  peril.  Lockhart,  who  declined  to  'Boswellize' 
Scott,  has  given  full  expression  to  this  fact,  contending 
that  if  conversation  is  not  to  be  misunderstood,  'it  is 
a  necessary  pre-requisite  that  we  should  be  completely 
familiar  with  all  the  interlocutors,  and  understand 
thoroughly  all  their  minutest  relations,  and  points  of 
common  knowledge.  ...  In  proportion  as  a  man  is 
witty  and  humorous,  there  will  always  be  about  him 
and  his  a  widening  maze  and  wilderness  of  cues  and 
catchwords,  which  the  uninitiated  will,  if  they  are  bold 
enough  to  try  interpretation,  construe,  ever  and  anon, 
egregiously  amiss  —  not  seldom  into  arrant  falsity.' 
Now  all  this  is  at  least  as  true  of  letter-writing  ^  as  of 
conversation.     It  is,  one  might  argue,  never  safe  to 

^  In  sending  to  Mason  the  letters  which  Gray  had  written  to  him,  Walpole 
wrote :  '  I  need  not  say  that  there  are  several  things  you  will  find  it  neces- 
sary to  omit.  ...  It  is  much  better  to  give  them  [the  public]  nothing,  than 
what  they  do  not  comprehend  and  which  they  consequently  misunderstand, 
because  they  will  think  they  comprehend,  and  which,  therefore,  must  mis- 
take. I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  not  best  that  good  writings  should  appear 
very  late,  for  they  who  by  being  nearest  in  time  are  nearest  to  understand- 
ing them,  are  also  nearest  to  misapprehending.'  Letters  8.  202;  19  Sep- 
tember 1772. 


244  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

attempt  to  understand  a  familiar  letter  until  you  know 
all  about  the  author  of  it,  and  almost  as  much  about  the 
recipient ;  for  the  letter  is  but  the  resultant  of  the  first 
force  working  upon  the  second. 

It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  no  good  letter  should 
ever  be  printed.  A  published  letter  courts  all  manner 
of  misconstruction,  and  exacts  premature  payment  for 
those  idle  words  whereof  we  are  one  day  to  give  ac- 
count. Few  men  would  willingly  yield  up  the  inti- 
macies of  their  private  correspondence  to  the  cruelty 
of  public  scrutiny  and  criticism ;  it  is  disturbing  to 
think  how  much  of  our  published  correspondence 
would  perish  if  the  wish  of  the  writer  could  effect  it. 

And  yet  it  is  this  very  unsuitability  for  print,  it  is 
this  baffling  intimacy,  the  covert  allusions,  the  obscure 
language  of  friendship,  that  attract  us  to  published 
correspondence.  The  pleasure  in  reading  it  is  the  fun 
of  seeing,  once  in  your  life,  what  was  never  intended  for 
your  eye.  Every  printed  letter  seems  to  reproach  us  in 
its  revelation  of  a  trust  betrayed.  There  is  thus  some- 
thing almost  unholy  in  the  joy  of  reading  published 
letters.  It  is  never  quite  a  respectable  thing  to  be 
doing.  There  is  something  of  the  eavesdropper  in  it ; 
it  savours  of  intrusion  and  at  times  even  of  listening  at 
keyholes.  One  must  be  a  kind  of  busybody  to  find 
out  what  it  all  means.  Sprightly  letters  are  often  as 
obscure  as  an  overheard  conversation :  witness  the 
following  extract  from  a  letter  of  Walpole  to  Thomas 
Gray : 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE     245 

George  Selwyn  says  I  may,  if  I  please,  write  Historic 
Doubts  on  the  present  Duke  of  G.  too.  Indeed  they 
would  be  doubts,  for  I  know  nothing  certainly. 

There  is  wit  here  and  more  than  one  sly  allusion ;  but 
it  is  only  by  prying  rather  deeply  into  old  scandals 
that  you  discover  the  full  meaning  of  the  passage. 
Familiar  correspondence  soon  comes  to  need  a  wealth 
of  annotation.  Walpole  speaks  of  certain  letters  of 
Gray  to  him  as  not  'printable  yet,'  on  the  ground  that 
they  are  'too  obscure  without  many  notes.'  ^  But  all 
the  editorial  art  in  the  world  will  not  restore  the  quon- 
dam lustre.  '  If  one's  tongue,'  Walpole  writes  to  George 
Montagu,  'don't  move  in  the  steps  of  the  day,  it  is 
only  an  object  of  ridicule,  like  Mrs.  Hobart  in  her 
cottillon.'  The  brilliancy  of  this  passage  is  bound  up 
with  the  precarious  fame  of  Mrs.  Hobart,  nay,  with 
the  yet  more  precarious  fame  of  her  dancing.  Its 
elusiveness  is  an  indication  of  the  unfathomable  quality 
in  letters. 

Walpole  was  himself  an  insatiable  reader  of  letters, 
and  understood  and  analyzed  his  ruling  passion : 

Fools  !  yes,  I  think  all  the  world  is  turned  fool,  or  was 
born  so ;  cette  iete  a  perruq^ie,  that  wig-block  the  Chan- 
cellor, what  do  you  think  he  has  done?  Burnt  all  his 
father's  correspondence  with  Pope,  Swift,  Arbuthnot 
&c.  —  why  do  you  think  ?  because  several  of  the  letters 
were  indiscreet.  To  be  sure  he  thought  they  would 
go  and  publish  themselves,  if  not  burnt,  but  indeed  I 
suspect  the  indiscretion  was  that  there  were  some  truths 
which  it  was  not  proper  to  preserve,  considering  con- 

1  Letters  8.  376 ;  8  December  1773. 


246  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

siderandis.  That  is  just  what  I  should  Hke  to  have 
seen.  There  was  otherwise  so  much  discretion,  and 
so  Httle  of  anything  else  except  hypocrisy  in  all  the 
letters  of  those  men  that  have  appeared,  that  I  should 
not  so  much  regret  what  discreet  folly  has  now  burnt. 
Apropos,  did  I  ever  tell  you  a  most  admirable  hon  mot  of 
Mr.  Bentiey  ?  He  was  talking  to  me  of  an  old  devout 
Lady  St.  John,  who  burnt  a  whole  trunk  of  letters  of 
the  famous  Lord  Rochester,  'for  which,'  said  Mr. 
Bentiey,  'her  soul  is  now  burning  in  heaven.'  The 
oddness,  confusion  and  wit  of  the  idea  struck  me  of  all 
things.^ 

'That  is  just  what  I  should  like  to  have  seen'  —  there  is 
the  passion  of  the  letter-monger.  It  was  all  very  indis- 
creet, no  doubt,  but  'that  is  just  what  I  should  like  to 
have  seen.'  The  indiscretion  is  the  best  proof  that 
the  correspondence  was  intimate,  that  it  was  not  a 
mere  series  of  messages  nor  a  volume  of  essays.  To 
burn  it  was  an  eminently  safe  thing  to  do  with  it  — 
and  eminently  deplorable. 

A  good  letter-writer,  a  Walpole,  a  Lamb,  is  hardly 
more  concerned  with  the  cause  of  edification  than  with 
the  cause  of  discretion.  His  concern  is  with  the  news. 
He  moves  genially  along  the  lower  levels  of  life,  content 
to  ramble  rather  than  to  soar,  and  forgets  high  philoso- 
phies and  abstract  truths.  What  he  offers  his  friend  is 
companionship,  not  education.  The  news  of  yesterday 
is  frequently  a  harder  thing  to  get  at  than  the  1  Wning 
of  the  ages,  and  all  the  wisdom  of  the  east  will  not, 
make  a  good  letter. 

1  Letters  9.  308 ;  21  December  1775. 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE     247 

This  ideal  of  familiar  correspondence  was  fully 
stated  in  the  eighteenth  century.  It  would  be  possible 
to  construct  a  whole  philosophy  of  the  subject  by  mar- 
shalling a  series  of  quotations  from  eighteenth  century 
letters.  Even  the  bluestockings  appreciated  the  art- 
lessness  of  letters.  Hannah  More  never  wrote  wiser 
sentences  than  these : 

If  I  want  wisdom,  sentiment  or  information,  I  can 
find  them  much  better  in  books  than  in  letters.  What  ^ 
I  want  in  a  letter  is  a  picture  of  my  friend's  mind,  and  ) 
the  common  sense  of  his  life.  I  want  to  know  what  he 
is  saying  and  doing :  I  want  him  to  turn  out  the  inside 
of  his  heart  to  me,  without  disguise,  without  appearing 
better  than  he  is,  without  writing  for  a  character.  I 
have  the  same  feeling  in  writing  to  him.  My  letter  is 
therefore  worth  nothing  to  an  indifferent  person,  but 
it  is  of  value  to  my  friend  who  cares  for  me.^ 

Madame  du  Deffand,  no  unworthy  successor  of  Madame 
de  Sevigne,  would  have  subscribed  to  all  this.  She,  too, 
thought  that  physics  and  metaphysics  had  no  place  in 
correspondence,  and  detested  the  letters  of  Abelard  and 
Heloise  because  they  lacked  the  note  of  intimacy  and 
were  filled  with  fustian,  'faux,  exagere,  degoutant.' 
She  begs  Walpole  to  fill  his  letters  with  trifles,  to  send 
news  of  his  dogs,  Vachette  and  Rosette,  to  describe  his 
curios,  and  to  omit  politics.  'J'aime  tons  les  details 
domestiques.  .  .  .  Dans  les  lettres  de  Madame  de 
Sevigne  c'est  un  des  articles  qui  me  plait  le  plus.'  ^ 
Here  was  a  correspondent  worthy  of  Walpole's  quill. 

1  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  51 ;   cf.  1.  235. 

2  Lettres  a  Walpole  1.  591 ;  4  July  1769. 


248  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

It  was  long  the  custom  to  sneer  at  Walpole  for  his 
gossip.  Lord  Macaulay  did  not  fail  to  ridicule  him 
for  it  in  language  as  unmeasured  as  that  of  scandal 
itself;  but  Macaulay's  manner  is  now  giving  way  to 
apologies  and  vindications  hardly  less  damaging. 
Walpole  was  indubitably  and  incorrigibly  a  gossip  — 
why  should  we  avoid  the  word  ?  He  did  not  avoid  it. 
He  was,  on  the  contrary,  the  first  to  make  the  charge. 
As  early  as  1749  he  calls  his  letters  to  Horace  Mann 
*  gossiping  gazettes';  yet  these  are  perhaps  as  little 
open  to  the  charge  as  any  letters  that  he  wrote.  The 
same  charge  was  brought  against  Walpole's  idol, 
Madame  de  Sevigne.  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu 
could  find  in  her  letters  nothing  but  gossip  —  '  some- 
times the  tittle-tattle  of  a  fine  lady  ;  sometimes  that  of 
an  old  nurse,  always  tittle-tattle.'  ^  A  similar  charge 
may  be  brought  against  Cowper,  Lamb,  Jane  Carlyle, 
and  all  favourite  letter- writers.  It  is  always  ready  to 
hand  for  those  who  prefer  disquisitions  to  news.  As 
for  Walpole's  letters,  they  might  almost  be  conceived 
as  a  delightful  defence  of  the  vice. 

Now  gossip  is  of  course  a  very  dreadful  business ; 
but  its  most  hardened  opponents  can  scarcely  deny 
that  it  has  at  times  been  the  staple  of  some  very  fine 
literature  indeed.  What  is  Pepys  but  gossip  ?  What 
would  Boswell  be  without  his  gossip  ?  Even  work  that 
professes  to  attack  gossip  is  often  interesting  chiefly 
for  its  illustration  of  what  it  denounces.     Look  at  the 

1  Letters,  ed.  Thomas,  2.  257;  20  July  1754. 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE     249 

career  of  Lady  Teazle.  As  long  as  she  retains  her  place 
in  the  Scandal  School,  she  is  human,  almost  lovable, 
and  wholly  delightful ;  but  as  soon  as  she  is  reformed, 
she  becomes  quite  insignificant.  Her  entrance  in  the 
fifth  act  is  the  dullest  moment  in  the  play,  and  her 
demeanour  is  wholly  unconvincing  and  perhaps  un- 
truthful. One  cannot  think  of  her  apart  from  her 
glittering  geysers  of  scandal ;  when  she  gives  up  gossip 
she  is  as  dull  as  Maria,  and  we  are  glad  that  the  play 
is  over.  If  there  is  a  more  depressing  spectacle  than  a 
bird  that  has  lost  its  wings,  it  is  a  wit  that  has  bridled 
the  tongue. 

Gossip,  in  its  milder  stages,  may  even  denote  a 
serene  interest  in  the  little  affairs  of  life,  which  is  truly 
admirable.  Cowper's  letters,  which  Lady  Mary  would 
no  doubt  have  found  quite  as  filled  with  tittle-tattle 
as  Madame  de  Sevigne's,  are  in  the  truest  sense  of  the 
term  the  treasure  of  the  humble.  The  finest  things  in 
them  are,  like  the  finest  things  in  The  Task,  the  de- 
scription of  domestic  trifles.  The  most  delightful  letter 
Cowper  ever  wrote  describes  a  runaway  rabbit.  Cow- 
per's eminence  as  a  letter-writer  is  an  invaluable  illus- 
tration of  the  fact  that  a  man  may  be  a  master  of 
this  art  though  his  life  contains  nothing  of  excitement 
or  romance.  The  great  explorers  and  adventurers 
have  seldom  been  good  letter- writers.  Macaulay 
laughed  at  Walpole  because  he  made  a  serious  business 
of  trifles  ;  but  it  is  in  this  very  fact  that  half  the  delight 
of   Walpole's   letters   consists.     Neither   Walpole   nor 


250  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

Cowper  could  have  written  the  letters  he  did  without 
that  love;  the  one  lends  as  much  interest  to  crossing 
the  Channel  as  to  crossing  the  Alps,  and  the  other 
amuses  us  as  much  with  the  loss  of  a  rabbit  as  with  the 
finding  of  a  continent.     Like  Biron  in  conversation. 

His  eye  begets  occasion  for  his  wit ; 
For  every  object  that  the  one  doth  catch, 
The  other  turns  to  a  mirth-moving  jest, 
Wliich  his  fair  tongue,  conceit's  expositor, 
Dehvers  in  such  apt  and  gracious  words. 
That  aged  ears  play  truant  at  his  tales. 
And  younger  hearings  are  quite  ravished ; 
So  sweet  and  voluble  is  his  discourse. 

The  display  of  such  a  wit  as  this  is  all  the  more 
delightful  in  a  letter  because  of  the  very  intimacy  of  : 
the  thing.     It  is  not  done  to  amuse  a  company,  but  to  | 
delight  a  friend.     Every  true  letter  is  a  gift.     If  it  | 
rises  to  the  plane  of  literature,  it  is  literature  created 
in  honour  of  an  individual,  and  is  his  to  cherish  or  de- 
stroy.    It  is  thus  the  most  personal  and  private  of  all  [ 
literary  types,  since  it  is  the  only  one  that  can  be  held 
to  be  the  peculiar  and  exclusive  property  of  an  indi- 
vidual.    A  lover  of  letters  is  as  jealous  as  he  is  insatiable.\^ 
Like  Madame  du  Deffand  with  the  letters  of  Walpole, 
he  is  always  looking  about  for  somebody  with  whom 
to  share  his  pleasures,  and  is  for  ever  discovering  that 
no  one  is  worthy  of  the  honour ;  ^  and,  like  her,  his 

^ '  J'aurais  bien  du  plaisir  de  pouvoir  lire  vos  lettres  avec  quelqu'un  qui 
en  sentirait  le  m^rite  et  avec  qui  j'en  pourrais  rire.'  Lettres  a  Walpole 
1.9;   21  April  17GS. 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE    251 

passion  is  such  that  he  would  give  the  two  letters  that 
he  has  for  the  one  which  he  is  awaiting.  The  secret 
of  such  a  jealous  sense  of  ownership  as  this  lies  in  the 
fact  that  every  intimate  letter  is  really  suffused  with 
two  personalities,  one  of  which  is  that  of  the  recipient. 
Such  intimate  correspondence  as  this  was  not  with- 
out an  effect  upon  English  literature.  The  idealization 
of  intimacy  which  made  it  possible  spread  the  love  of 
simplicity  and  of  a  more  familiar  tone.  The  type  was, 
oddly  enough,  at  one  with  the  new  romanticism  in  this 
demand  for  the  natural.  The  style  in  which  it  was 
expressed  is  fifty  years  ahead  of  its  time,  and  already 
prophesies  the  more  familiar  tone  of  such  men  as  Lamb 
and  Hazlitt.  The  following  passage  from  Walpole  is 
typical : 

Every  summer  one  lives  in  a  state  of  mutiny  and 
murmur,  and  I  have  found  the  reason.  It  is  because  we 
will  affect  to  have  a  summer,  and  we  have  no  title  to 
any  such  thing.  Our  poets  learned  their  trade  of  the* 
Romans,  and  so  adopted  the  terms  of  their  master^ 
They  talk  of  shady  groves,  purling  streams,  and  cooling 
breezes,  and  we  get  sore  throats  and  agues  with  at- 
tempting to  realize  these  visions.  Master  Damon 
writes  a  song  and  invites  Miss  Chlae  to  enjoy  the  cool  of 
the  evening,  and  the  deuce  a  bit  have  we  of  any  such 
thing  as  a  cool  evening.  Zephyr  is  a  north-east  wind 
that  makes  Damon  button  up  to  the  chin,  and  pinches 
Chloe's  nose  till  it  is  red  and  blue ;  and  then  they  cry, 
'This  is  a  bad  summer'  —  as  if  we  ever  had  any  other. 
The  best  sun  we  have  is  made  of  Newcastle  coal,  and 
I  am  determined  never  to  reckon  upon  any  other. 
We  ruin  ourselves  with  inviting  over  foreign  trees,  and 
make  our  houses  clamber  up  hills  to  look  at  prospects. 


252  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

How  our  ancestors  would  laugh  at  us,  who  knew  there 
was  no  being  comfortable  unless  you  had  a  high  hill 
before  your  nose  and  a  thick  warm  wood  at  your  back !  ^ 

If  the  style  of  nineteenth  century  prose  marks  an 
improvement  over  that  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
respect  of  sprightliness,  then  surely  such  a  passage  as 
this  must  be  held  to  indicate  the  progress  towards  it. 
It  is  amazing  how  wide-spread  was  the  knowledge  of 
this  craft.  There  are  scores  of  letter-writers  at  the  end 
of  the  century  who  may  be  read  with  pleasure.  Even 
Mrs.  Montagu  could  descend  from  the  heights  long 
enough  to  write  in  this  pleasant  tone  to  Mrs.  Garrick 
and  Miss  More : 

Most  engaged  and  engaging  ladies,  will  you  drink  tea 
with  me  on  Thursday  with  a  very  small  party  .f*  I 
think  it  an  age,  not  a  golden  age,  since  I  saw  you  last.^ 

With  the  presence  of  such  letter-writers  as  Cowper, 
Johnson,  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  and  Horace 
Walpole,  not  to  mention  countless  minor  names,  it  is 
hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  familiar  letter 
was  the  chosen  medium  of  the  age,  as  the  periodic  essay 
was  of  the  earlier  period  and  as  the  drama  was  of  the 
Elizabethan  age.  It  will  always  remain  the  best 
general  record  of  the  social  life  of  the  century ;  but  its 
value  is  more  particular  than  this.  You  may  read  the 
boisterous  life  of  the  age  in  its  novels,  you  may  find  its 

1  Letters  7.  195 ;   15  June  1768. 

2  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  1.  253 ;   1782, 


THE  ART  OF  FAMILIAR  CORRESPONDENCE    253 

solidity  in  Johnson  and  its  superficiality  in  Chester- 
field;  you  may  see  its  rags  in  Hogarth  or  its  grace  in 
Reynolds;  but  for  its  simplicity,  its  affectionate  mti- 
macies,  and  its  smiling  ease,  you  must  turn  to  its 
letters. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

Fanny  Burney  and  the  Art  of  the  Diarist 

The  Diary  of  Fanny  Burney  cannot,  like  the  conver- 
sation of  Johnson  and  the  correspondence  of  Walpole, 
be  cited  as  perhaps  the  finest  specimen  of  its  kind. 
Of  the  arts  we  are  discussing,  the  diarist's  is  the  most 
diflBcult  to  define  or  characterize ;  for  at  one  extreme, 
it  may  shrink  into  the  duhiess  of  a  calendar,  and  at  the 
other,  it  may  record  the  agonies  of  a  soul's  attempt 
to  be  honest  with  its  God  or  with  itself.  Kinds  so 
distinct  as  Pepys's  Diary  and  the  Confessions  of 
Rousseau  seem  to  defy  all  attempts  at  common  defini- 
tion. The  Diary  of  Miss  Burney,  unlike  these  works, 
has  no  psychological  problems  ;  but  exists  for  the  simple 
and  engaging  purpose  of  recording  events  of  interest. 
In  the  beginning  she  resolved  never  to  mix  with  her 
record,  her  'religious  sentiments,  opinions,  hopes,  fears, 
beliefs,  or  aspirations ;  ^  but  to  reserve  her  Diary  for 
worldly  dross.'  If  not  among  the  greatest  diaries  of 
the  world,  it  is  among  the  most  normal ;  and  it  is  not 
impossible  to  define  it  roughly.  Diaries  of  this  kind 
may  be  described  as  a  sort  of  letter  to  oneself. 

Miss  Burney's  Diary  was,  however,  written  to  be 

1  4.  288. 
254 


THE  ART  OF  THE  DIARIST  ^55 

read  by  others  than  herself.  It  was  addressed  to  her 
sisters,  to  whom  sections  of  it  were  despatched  from 
time  to  time.  It  partakes,  therefore,  in  large  measure 
of  the  nature  of  private  correspondence,  and  much  that 
has  been  said  of  that  type  applies  obviously  to  this. 
But  there  are  important  differences.  The  greatness 
of  the  Diary  certainly  does  not  consist  in  the  delightful 
treatment  of  domestic  and  personal  trifles.  Nor 
does  Miss  Burney  paint  highly  for  the  mere  love  of 
painting,  as  the  conversationalist  and  the  letter-writer 
often  do.  She  is  not  communicating  herself,  but  the 
important  life  with  which  she  is  in  touch.  She  does 
not  so  much  wish  that  the  reader  should  see  her,  as 
that  he  should  see  with  her  eyes  —  and  her  artistic 
vision  was  remarkably  shrewd  and  keen.  The  Diary 
is  thus  a  panorama  rather  than  a  portrait.  We  read 
diaries  either  to  get  at  the  personality  of  the  writer 
or  at  the  events  described.  The  character  of  Fanny 
Burney,  combining  sweetness,  shyness,  wisdom,  and 
pride,  presents  no  particular  problems,  and  is  not  of 
commanding  interest.  What  she  saw  and  what  she 
heard,  the  people  who  loved  her,  who  attached  her  to 
them,  and  who,  not  unfrequently,  preyed  upon  her  — 
these  constitute  the  interest  of  the  book ;  it  is  these 
and  the  art  with  which  they  are  set  before  us  that  make 
the  Diary  what  it  is. 

The  thought  that  is  for  ever  borne  in  upon  the  reader 
is  that  Miss  Burney  was  a  very  lucky  woman.  Suffer- 
ing as  she  did  from  shyness  and  an  inflamed  sense  of 


256  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

propriety,  it  might  easily  have  been  her  lot  to  lead  a 
life  as  secluded  as  that  of  her  friend,  Mr.  Crisp  of 
Chessington ;  yet  in  fact  Johnson  himself  did  not 
commonly  associate  with  more  people  whom  one  would 
like  to  have  known.  The  young  lady's  unassuming 
manner  was  of  actual  value  in  increasing  her  circle  of 
desirable  acquaintance,  when  once  she  was  famous. 
When  once  she  was  famous,  I  repeat,  for  most  of  her 
interesting  friends  and  experiences  came  to  her  as  the 
result  of  her  celebrity  and  of  the  bluestocking  patron- 
age which  ensued  upon  it.  It  was  Mrs.  Thrale  who 
drew  Fanny  Burney  into  the  great  world  which  she 
was  to  adorn  and  to  record ;  but  the  interest  of  Mrs. 
Thrale  went  out  rather  to  the  author  of  Evelina,  than 
to  the  mouse-like  young  lady  of  St.  Martin  Street. 
Seldom  has  so  timid  an  entry  into  the  literary  world 
been  accorded  a  reception  so  flattering.  The  young 
woman  who  had  disposed  of  her  novel  under  cover  of 
night  and  anonymity,  as  though  it  had  been  so  much 
stolen  goods,  was  presently  to  find  that  she  had  every 
bluestocking  in  London  at  her  feet,  and  that  the  King 
of  Letters  was  proclaiming  her  the  equal  of  Fielding. 
One  speculates  what  would  have  become  of  her  if  she 
had  begun  her  career  with  The  Wanderer  instead  of 
Evelina.  She  had  the  luck  to  write  her  best  novel  — 
some  will  say  her  only  good  novel  —  first ;  and  from 
that  happy  beginning  sprang  all  the  rest  of  her  good 
fortune. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  by  those  who  study  Miss 


THE  ART  OF  THE  DIARIST  257 

Burney's  career  that  the  appearance  of  Evelina,  in  1778, 
marks  a  definite  period  in  the  history  of  woman's  con- 
tribution to  EngHsh  hterature.  Johnson's  estimate  of 
the  book  was  of  course  ludicrously  wrong,  and  it  is  well 
to  assume  that  his  chivalry  (for  once)  got  the  better 
of  his  judgment ;  yet  it  is  impossible  to  deny  the  super- 
lative significance  of  the  book.  It  was  the  greatest 
creative  work  that  had  yet  been  produced  by  an  English- 
woman. It  is  still  read  with  delight  by  people  who 
never  heard  of  Aphra  Behn's  Oroonoko,  Miss  Fielding's 
Peter  Simple,  or  Charlotte  Lennox's  Female  Quixote. 
The  bluestockings  were  right  in  feeling  that  the  author 
had  forced  a  new  estimate  of  the  sex.  The  respect  for 
her  work  was  universal :  extravagant  things  —  im- 
possibilities —  were  expected  of  her. 

It  was  now  that  Miss  Burney's  modesty  (so  care- 
fully nurtured)  was  felt  to  be  but  an  added  grace.  The 
most  vicious  satirist  could  discover  in  'little  Burney' 
nothing  of  the  arrogance  of  a  femme  savante.  She  gave 
the  impression  of  hating  her  talents  and  the  fame  which 
had  been  thrust  upon  her.  Her  unassuming  demeanour 
and  her  youthful  sweetness  (for  she  was  still  girlish  at 
twenty-six)  made  her  the  delight  of  every  drawing- 
room  she  would  consent  to  enter,  and  not  unfrequently 
brought  down  upon  her  admiration  and  social  attentions 
which  she  would  have  been  happier  without.  At  last, 
in  an  unhappy  hour,  they  brought  her  to  the  attention 
of  Queen  Charlotte.  But  for  the  moment,  all  was  sweet- 
ness and  triumph  and  popularity.     Her  position  among 


258  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

the  bluestockings  is  noticeable;  she  was  beloved  of 
them  all.  She  was  loyal  to  Mrs.  Thrale  without 
sacrificing  the  regard  of  Mrs.  Montagu  or  in  any  way 
offending  her  beloved  Mrs.  Ord.  She  almost  recon- 
ciled stiff  old  Mrs.  Delany  and  the  dear  Duchess  of 
Portland  to  literary  eminence  in  a  woman.  Outside 
this  circle  she  was  no  less  esteemed.  Johnson  loved 
her  as  a  daughter,  and  professed  himself  glad  to  'send 
his  name  down  to  posterity '  linked  with  hers.  Burke, 
who  read  Evelina  repeatedly,  distinguished  her  by  a 
special  greeting  when  she  appeared  at  the  trial  of 
Warren  Hastings,  as,  indeed,  did  the  prisoner  himself. 
Wyndham  delighted  to  converse  with  her  by  the 
hour.  Walpole  received  her  at  Strawberry  Hill,  and 
was  no  less  pleased  with  her  unpretentious  manner 
than  with  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Montagu  now  had  a 
superior.  Had  Miss  Burney  cared  to  open  a  salon, 
she  might  have  reigned  over  these  men  like  a  more 
rational  Lespinasse.  The  more  her  fortune  is  dwelt 
upon,  the  more  obvious  it  becomes.  As  a  child  she 
had  had  David  Garrick  for  a  grown-up  playmate ; 
as  a  young  woman  she  had  the  privilege  of  welcoming 
Sarah  Siddons  to  the  court ;  later  in  life,  she  conversed 
on  terms  of  intimacy  with  Madame  de  Stael.  She 
had  passed  the  day  in  Reynolds's  studio,  and  had  looked 
at  the  stars  through  the  glass  of  Herschel.  She  was 
visited  at  Windsor  by  Boswell,  proof-sheets  in  hand; 
and  Sheridan,  at  the  height  of  his  reputation,  repeat- 
edly invited  her  to  write  a  comedy.     She  described  her 


THE  ART  OF  THE  DIARIST  259 

acquaintance  to  Queen  Charlotte  as  being  *not  only 
very  numerous,  but  very  mixed,  taking  in  not  only 
most  stations  in  life,  but  also  most  parties.'  ^  We 
may  marvel  at  the  fact  that  the  shy  Fanny  Burney 
became  a  novelist ;  but  she  could  hardly  help  becoming 
a  diarist. 

Even  the  great  misfortune  of  her  life  really  contrib- 
uted to  her  greatness.  Her  life  at  Court,  which  half 
killed  her,  a  life  which  she  repeatedly  calls  *  monastic' 
and  describes  as  '  dead  and  tame '  —  strong  words  from 
one  who  thought  she  adored  the  Queen  —  enabled  her 
to  depict  a  kind  of  life  which,  dull  as  it  was,  can  never 
lack  significance.  If  for  no  more  important  reason, 
her  account  of  it  will  always  be  read  as  one  of  the  great 
dramas  of  disillusion.  It  furnished  Macaulay  with 
material  for  one  of  his  most  brilliant  extravaganzas. 
Like  him,  we  read  the  third  and  fourth  volume  of  the 
Diary,  which  detail  that  life,  with  feelings  of  rage  at  the 
royal  gaolers  and  at  the  Hanoverian  ideals  of  conduct 
that  they  almost  succeeded  in  imposing  upon  her. 
The  Queen's  obvious  delight  in  checking  Miss  Burney's 
literary  activity  and  in  stiffening  her  sense  of  propriety 
(which  needed  no  stiffening)  makes  it  diflBcult  to  control 
the  judgment ;  and  yet,  upon  reflection,  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  reader's  rage  is  but  a  tribute  to  one  of  the 
most  effective  pieces  of  realism  in  the  language.  It  is 
true  that  it  is  often  dull,  but  so  is  realism.  It  is  true 
that  Miss  Burney's  adulation  of  the  Royal  Family  is 

1  Diary  3.  181. 


260  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

at  times  painfully  fulsome ;  but  even  this  only  heightens 
the  description  of  that  life  which,  despite  all  adulation, 
she  found  unendurable.  The  story  of  her  captivity  is 
no  less  thrilling  than  that  of  Pamela  in  the  clutches  of 
Mrs.  Jewkes. 

As  a  delineation  of  an  ogress,  Mrs.  Schwellenberg 
is  at  once  more  horrible  and  more  lifelike  than  Mrs. 
Jewkes ;  beside  her,  all  the  '  weatherbeaten  old  she- 
dragons '  of  eighteenth  century  fiction  and  drama  pale 
into  insignificance.  Miss  Burney  has  often  been  praised 
for  creating  the  character  of  Madame  Duval,  but  that 
lady  is  a  mere  commonplace  when  compared  with  the 
spiteful  old  crone  who  had  no  interest  above  piquet  and 
who  divided  the  slight  remnant  of  affection  of  which 
her  withered  nature  was  capable  between  her  royal 
owner  and  her  tame  frogs.  Her  ambitions  for  Fanny 
Burney,  the  idol  of  the  blues,  was  that  she  should 
learn  piquet,  give  up  writing,  and  become  Uke  unto 
herself,  a  spaniel  of  the  backstairs.  Few  characters  in 
literature  are  at  once  so  comic  and  so  loathsome. 

It  might  be  assumed  that  the  depiction  of  Mrs. 
Schwellenberg  were  the  result  of  mere  dislike,  if  Miss 
Burney  had  not,  at  the  same  moment,  been  proving 
by  her  portrayal  of  Queen  Charlotte  that  her  vision 
was  never  more  keen  and  her  judgment  of  character 
never  more  unbiassed.  She  had  no  intention  whatever 
of  analyzing  her  mistress.  As  a  lover  of  royal  families, 
she  was  far  more  prone  to  idealize  her ;  but  for  all 
that  she  had  a  genius  for  truthfulness,  and  could  not 


THE  ART  OF  THE  DIARIST  261 

help  mirroring  the  royal  nature  with  a  fatal  accuracy. 
It  is  the  revelation  of  such  royalty  as  can  conceive  no 
happiness  apart  from  its  own  presence,  of  a  queenly 
etiquette  in  which  a  native  sweetness  is  lost  in  acquired 
selfishness.  For  subtlety  and  moderation  this  char- 
acterization is  unsurpassed  in  its  own  century,  and  not 
often  equalled  in  the  century  that  followed  it,  for  all 
its  psychology  and  realism. 

The  triumph  of  Miss  Burney's  realism  over  her 
personal  inclination  may  be  illustrated  by  setting  side 
by  side  two  sentences  drawn  from  the  same  entry  in 
the  Diary  for  December  1790  :  'Her  Majesty  was  very 
kind  during  this  time,  and  the  Princesses  interested 
themselves  about  me  with  a  sweetness  very  grateful 
to  me.'  This  is  the  expression  of  what  is  proper  from 
the  Keeper  of  the  Robes ;  but  on  the  next  page  it 
shrivels  away  before  her  sense  of  actuality :  '  Though 
I  was  frequently  so  ill  in  her  presence  that  I  could 
scarcely  stand,  I  saw  she  concluded  me,  while  life 
remained,  inevitably  hers.' 

These  court -episodes  in  the  Diary  of  Miss  Burney 
are  of  special  use  in  showing  her  powers  of  characteriza- 
tion. The  earlier  sections  of  the  book  deal  with 
people  no  less  interesting,  but  so  familiar  to  us  from 
other  sources  that  Miss  Burney's  skill  in  depicting 
them  is  not  so  readily  perceived.  No  particular  sur- 
prise mingles  with  our  pleasure  as  we  read  of  Johnson 
and  of  Mrs.  Thrale,  of  Reynolds  and  of  Mrs.  Montagu, 
because  the  author's  art  seems  but  to  reflect,  at  most 


262  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

to  amplify,  what  we  have  seen  elsewhere.  It  is  when 
she  has  occasion  to  make  us  acquainted  with  persons 
whom  we  have  not  met  elsewhere,  with  'Mr.  Turbulent' 
and  Mrs.  Schwellenberg,  that  we  begin  to  perceive 
the  extent  of  her  powers.  Her  five  years'  imprison- 
ment in  no  way  impairs  her  observation  of  human 
nature.  The  sudden  apparition  of  James  Boswell  upon 
the  scene  is  as  captivating  a  piece  of  writing  as  any- 
thing in  the  whole  Diary ;  the  contrast  between  his 
cheerful  officiousness  and  the  blundering  officiousness 
of  Mr.  Turbulent  is  a  suflBcient  proof  of  the  fact  that 
Miss  Burney  has  retained  all  her  old  skill  in  charac- 
terization. Nor  has  the  sense  for  a  boisterous  scene 
departed  from  the  author  of  Evelina.  The  quiet  little 
lady  with  prim  demeanour  still  had  a  love  of  broad 
comedy,  as  the  following  pages  may  show.  The  scene 
is  Mrs.  Schwellenberg's  table,  the  occasion  a  dinner  of 
the  royal  attendants  in  honour  of  the  King's  birthday, 
the  chief  actor  the  Duke  of  Clarence  (afterwards  Wil- 
liam IV),  the  Royal  Sailor,  who  is  shown,  to  use  Miss 
Burney's  words  —  and  they  are  significant  of  her  con- 
scious art  —  'in  genuine  colours.' 

Champagne  being  now  brought  for  the  Duke,  he 
ordered  it  all  round.  When  it  came  to  me,  I  whispered 
to  Westerhaults  [the  footman]  to  carry  it  on  :  the  Duke 
slapped  his  hand  violently  on  the  table,  and  called  out, 
'  Oh ,  you  shall  drink  it ! ' 

There  was  no  resisting  this.  We  all  stood  up,  and 
the  Duke  sonorously  gave  the  Royal  toast. 

'And  now,'  cried  he,  making  us  all  sit  down  again. 


THE  ART  OF  THE   DIARIST  263 

'  where  are  my  rascals  of  servants  ?     I  sha'n't  be  in  time 

for  the  ball ;  besides,  I've  got  a tailor  waiting  to  fix 

on  my  epaulette !  Here,  you,  go  and  see  for  my  ser- 
vants !  d  'ye  hear  ?     Scamper  off  ! ' 

Off  ran  William. 

'  Come,  let's  have  the  King's  health  again.  De  Luc, 
drink  it.     Here,  Champagne  to  De  Luc  ! ' 

I  wish  you  could  have  seen  Mr.  De  Luc's  mixed 
simper  —  half  pleased,  half  alarmed.  However,  the 
wine  came  and  he  drank  it,  the  Duke  taking  a  bumper 
for  himself  at  the  same  time. 

'  Poor  Stanhope  ! '  cried  he  :  '  Stanhope  shall  have  a 
glass  too !  Here,  Champagne !  What  are  you  all 
about?  Why  don't  you  give  Champagne  to  poor 
Stanhope  ? ' 

Mr.  Stanhope,  with  great  pleasure,  complied,  and 
the  Duke  again  accompanied  him. 

'Come  hither,  do  you  hear?'  cried  the  Duke  to  the 
servants,  and  on  the  approach,  slow  and  submissive, 
of  Mrs.  Stainforth's  man,  he  hit  him  a  violent  slap 
on  the  back,  calling  out  '  Hang  you !  Why  don't 
you  see  for  my  rascals  ? ' 

Away  flew  the  man,  and  then  he  called  out  to  Wester- 
haults,  'Hark'ee!  bring  another  glass  of  Champagne 
to  Mr.  De  Luc!' 

Mr.  De  Tmc  knows  these  Royal  youths  too  well  to 
venture  at  so  vain  an  experiment  as  disputing  with 
them  ;  so  he  only  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  drank  the 
wine.     The  Duke  did  the  same. 

'And  now,  poor  Stanhope,'  cried  the  Duke,  'give 
another  to  poor  Stanhope,  d'ye  hear  ? ' 

'Is  not  your  Royal  Highness  afraid,'  cried  Mr. 
Stanhope,  displaying  the  full  circle  of  his  borrowed 
teeth,  'I  shall  be  apt  to  be  rather  up  in  the  world,  as 
the  folks  say,  if  I  tope  on  at  this  rate  ? ' 

'Not  at  all!  you  can't  get  drunk  in  a  better  cause. 
I'd  get  drunk  myself  if  it  was  not  for  the  ball.  Here, 
Champagne !  another  glass  for  the  philosopher !  I 
keep  sober  for  Mary.'  .  .  . 


264  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

He  then  said  it  was  necessary  to  drink  the  Queen's 
health. 

The  gentlemen  here  made  no  demur,  though  Mr. 
De  Luc  arched  his  eyebrows  in  expressive  fear  of  con- 
sequences. 

'A  bumper,'  cried  the  Duke,  'to  the  Queen's  gentle- 
man-usher.' 

They  all  stood  up  and  drank  the  Queen's  health. 
'Here  are  three  of  us,'  cried  the  Duke,  'all  belonging 
to  the  Queen :    the  Queen's  philosopher,  the  Queen's 
gentleman-usher,    and   the   Queen's   son ;     but,    thank 
Heaven,  I'm  nearest ! ' 

'Sir,'  cried  Mr.  Stanhope,  a  little  affronted,  'I  am 
not  now  the  Queen's  gentleman-usher ;  I  am  the  Queen's 
equerry,  sir.' 

'  A  glass  more  of  Champagne  here  !  What  are  you  all 
so  slow  for  ?  Where  are  all  my  rascals  gone  ?  They've 
put  me  in  one  passion  already  this  morning.  Come,  a 
glass  of  Champagne  for  the  Queen's  gentleman-usher  ! ' 
laughing  heartily. 

'  No,  sir,'  repeated  Mr.  Stanhope, '  I  am  equerry  now  !  * 

'And  another  glass  to  the  Queen's  philosopher !' 

Neither  gentleman  objected ;    but  Mrs.   Schwellen- 

burg,  who  had  sat  laughing  and  happy  all  this  time, 

now  grew  alarmed,  and  said,  'Your  Royal  Highness,  I 

am  afraid  for  the  ball ! ' 

'Hold  your  potato-jaw,  my  dear,'  cried  the  Duke, 
patting  her  ;  but  recollecting  himself,  he  took  her  hand 
and  pretty  abruptly  kissed  it,  and  then,  flinging  it 
hastily  away,  laughed  aloud,  and  called  out,  'There! 
that  will  make  amends  for  anything,  so  now  I  may  say 
what  I  will.  So  here !  a  glass  of  Champagne  for  the 
Queen's  philosopher  and  the  Queen's  gentleman-usher ! 
Hang  me  if  it  will  not  do  them  a  monstrous  deal  of 
good ! ' 

Here  news  was  brought  that  the  equipage  was  in 
order.  He  started  up,  calling  out,  'Now,  then,  for 
my tailor.'  ^ 

1  Diary  4.  471  ff. ;  4  June  1791. 


THE  ART  OF  THE  DIARIST  265 

Scenes  as  vivid,  though  not  so  uproarious,  might 
be  cited  in  every  chapter  of  the  work ;  to  quote  them 
all  would  be  to  print  half  the  Diary.  The  selection  here 
given  is  sufficient  to  show  why  Miss  Burney's  writing  is 
invariably  referred  to  as  dramatic.  The  Diary  is,  in 
parts,  so  like  a  novel  as  to  prompt  the  query  whether 
it  is  at  all  reliable  as  a  record  of  facts.  Did  not  the 
author's  imagination  play  freely  over  the  events  ? 
Did  she  not  select,  arrange,  and  colour  according  to 
the  demands  of  art  rather  than  of  history  ?  Are  the 
conversations  not  improved  ?  Is  not  the  diarist  a 
novelist  still  ?  Questions  of  this  large  kind  can  hardly 
be  answered  save  in  a  large,  impressionistic  way.  The 
Diary  is,  in  general,  a  truthful  document  and  a  reliable 
account  of  the  life  which  it  records.  A  mere  glance 
at  the  book  will  reveal  the  fact  that  Miss  Burney  had 
little  of  Boswell's  passion  for  literalness,  for  accurate 
dates,  and  for  written  evidence.  But  Boswell  was 
unique  in  his  generation,  and  Boswell  was  a  lawyer. 
Miss  Burney  was  writing  to  amuse  her  sisters,  not  to 
inform  the  public ;  but  there  are  passages  which  show 
that  she  was  endowed  with  a  remarkably  accurate 
memory.  She  once  has  occasion  ^  to  quote  a  letter 
from  memory ;  a  comparison  of  it  with  the  original, 
which  happens  to  be  in  existence,  reveals  no  evidence  of 
misinterpretation,  and  shows  the  copy  to  be,  in  fact, 
very  nearly  a  literal  reproduction  of  the  original. 
We  are  to  remember  that  Miss  Burney  had  been  in  the 

1  Diary,  19  November  1783. 


266  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

habit  of  keeping  a  diary,  recording  conversations  which 
had  interested  her,  ever  since  the  age  of  fifteen ;  and 
that  this  had  strengthened  her  memory  as  well  as  her 
powers  of  observation.  It  was  to  a  similar  practice 
that  Boswell  owed  his  ability  to  record  conversation 
with  accuracy ;  and  he  himself  asserted  that  the  ability 
grew  with  practice.  There  is  no  reason  for  supposing 
that  the  results  in  one  case  were  radically  different 
from  those  in  the  other.  Certain  it  is  that  Miss  Bur- 
ney's  record  of  Johnson's  conversation  is  in  no  way 
inconsistent  with  Boswell's.  To  say  that  in  describing 
life  at  Streatham  or  at  the  Court  she  used  her  skill  in 
selection  and  that  she  employed  the  judgment  of  a 
novelist  in  beginning  and  ending  a  conversation  effec- 
tively is  merely  to  repeat  that  the  Diary  is  a  work  of 
art.  Judgment  in  the  choice  of  facts  to  set  down  need 
not  indicate  a  misinterpretation  of  them. 

There  is  but  one  quality  in  Miss  Burney  which  shakes 
the  reader's  confidence  in  her  judgment  of  character. 
There  is  a  tendency  to  emotionalism  in  her  which  the 
irreverent  will  term  gush.  She  was  touched  with  the 
sentimentality  of  her  times.  The  tear  of  sensibility 
is  ever  trembling  in  her  eyes.  Her  affection  for  Mrs. 
Thrale,  Mrs.  Locke,  Mrs.  Delany,  and  most  other  ladies, 
for  'dear  Daddy  Crisp,'  for  'dear  Sir  Joshua,'  is  so 
effusive  as  to  make  all  terms  of  endearment  seem 
tawdry. 

Hardly  less  distressing  than  this  mawkishness  is  the 
lady's  self-consciousness,   which  she  mistook  for  the 


THE  ART  OF  THE  DIARIST  267 

virtue  of  modesty.  The  flattery  which  brought  the 
blush  of  shame  to  her  cheek  and  kept  her  on  the  verge 
of  swooning,  the  flattery  which  made  her  shrink  into 
corners  or  retire  in  confusion  from  the  scene,  the  praise 
which  was  too  gross  for  her  ears,  all  this  is  written 
down  in  extenso  and  with  something  unpleasantly 
like  gusto.  It  flows  through  the  Diary  like  an  apoca- 
lyptic river  of  honey.  Macaulay  reminds  us,  quite 
properly,  that  all  this  was  'for  the  eyes  of  two  or  three 
persons  who  had  loved  her  from  infancy,  who  had  loved 
her  in  obscurity,  and  to  whom  her  fame  gave  the  purest 
and  most  exquisite  delight.'  This  is  true,  no  doubt; 
but  might  not  father  and  sisters  have  achieved  delight 
without  this  surfeit  of  sweetness,  'whereof  a  little  more 
than  a  little  is  by  much  too  much '  ?  It  is  all  very 
human,  of  course,  and  it  would  be  chivalrous  to  forget 
it.  But  all  the  chivalry  in  the  world  cannot  hide  the 
fact  that  it  is  a  serious  blot  on  the  art  of  the  Diary,  a 
blot  that  we  cannot  but  wish  away  from  so  splendid  a 
work. 


CHAPTER  XV 

BOSWELL   AND    THE   ArT    OF    InTIMATE   BiOGRAPHY 

It  is  the  privilege  of  few  men  in  any  age  to  raise 
an  art  to  such  perfection  that  it  becomes  in  effect  a  new 
thing.  The  development  of  intimate  biography  is  still 
largely  the  work  of  one  man.  After  a  hundred  years  of 
memorabilia,  personal  reminiscences,  and  interviews, 
Boswell  is  still  as  indubitably  the  greatest  of  biogra- 
phers as  when  he  referred  to  his  book  as  the  '  first  in  the 
world,'  or  when,  fifty  years  later,  Macaulay  applied 
to  him  the  language  of  the  race-course,  and  pronounced, 
'Eclipse  is  first,  and  the  rest  nowhere.'  Later  biog- 
raphers do  not  eclipse  him,  nor  do  earlier  ones  explain 
him.  A  comparison  of  his  work  with  what  went  before 
serves  only  to  reveal  his  utter  uniqueness.  If  an  earlier 
biographer,  suggests  a  point  of  comparison  in  his  realis- 
tic record  of  conversation,  the  slightness  of  his  work 
gives  no  conception  of  the  whole  life  he  is  writing; 
if  another  seems  like  Boswell  in  refusing  to  write  a  mere 
eulogy,  he  seems  chill  and  judicial  where  Boswell  is 
warm  with  pulsing  life.  Other  lives  give  us  admirable 
things :  table-talk,  a  portrait,  a  eulogy,  a  handful  of 
anecdotes,  a  list  of  dates  from  'pedigree  to  funeral/ 
or  a  volume  of  letters ;    but  Boswell  gives  us  all  these 

268 


O 

>-» 

X 
H 

o 

m 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY  269 

and  more.  He  aspires  to  be  as  complete  as  life  itself. 
Boswell  knew  and  delighted  in  other  biographies ;  but 
was  hardly  influenced  by  them.  He  knew  Plutarch, 
Xenophon,  and  Valerius  Maximus,  among  the  ancients, 
and  Jonson's  Timber,  Selden's  T able-Talk,  and  Spence's 
Anecdotes,  among  modern  ana;  but  is  like  none  of  these. 
He  surpasses  them  all  in  intimacy,  variety,  and  what, 
for  want  of  a  better  name,  may  be  called  his  sustained 
quality.  To  read  Boswell  after  these  men  is  like 
passing  to  a  Flemish  painting  from  a  study  in  black  and 
white. 

In  so  far  as  he  can  be  said  to  have  learned  his  art 
from  any  man,  his  master  was  Johnson  himself.  The 
first  sentence  in  the  Life  proclaims  Johnson's  superiority 
to  all  men  in  writing  the  lives  of  others.  Biography  was 
often  discussed  by  the  two  men  together,  and  Boswell 
was  also  well  acquainted  with  Johnson's  published 
remarks  on  the  subject.  Johnson  enunciated,  with  fair 
consistency,  the  theory  of  intimate  biography,  but  he 
never  fully  realized  it  in  any  work  of  his.  Thus  he 
was  wont  to  assert  that  autobiography  was  superior  to  i 
biography,  for  the  simple  reason  that  a  man  might  / 
more  readily  reveal  the  facts  concerning  himself.  If 
a  man's  life  is  to  be  written  by  another  than  himself, 
it  should  be  by  one  who  has  *  eat  and  drunk  and  lived  in 
social  intercourse  with  him.'  The  material  of  biog- 
raphy, he  asserts,  at  various  times,  to  be  'trifles,'  the 
'delicate  features  of  the  mind,'  the  'minute  peculiari- 
ties of  conduct,'  'domestic  privacies,'  and  'the  minute 


270  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

details  of  daily  life.'  He  approved  of  much  anecdote  in 
biography,  used  such  incidents  with  a  free  hand  in  his 
own  work,  and  encouraged  Boswell  to  record  them. 
He  did  not,  however,  anywhere  fully  embody  his 
theories.  It  was,  in  truth,  impossible  for  him  to  do  so 
in  the  Lives  of  the  Poets,  for,  with  the  exception  of 
Savage,  he  had  been  on  terms  of  real  intimacy  with 
none  of  these  men.  Had  he  written  the  life  of  Gold- 
smith, as  he  once  thought  of  doing,  he  might,  if  his 
indolence  had  not  prevented  him,  have  produced  such  a 
book  as  would  illustrate  his  own  theories.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  this  lack  of  intimacy  in  the  Lives  of  the  Poets, 
he  was  attacked  for  making  them  too  familiar.  Potter, 
Mrs.  Montagu's  protege,  denounced  his  introduction 
of  trifles  into  serious  biography,  considering  it  beneath 
the  dignity  of  that  art  to  mention  that  Pope  wore  three 
pairs  of  stockings  to  increase  the  size  of  his  legs,  and 
that  he  loved  to  feast  on  potted  lampreys  which  he 
heated  in  a  silver  saucepan.  'We  know,'  writes  the 
critic,  'that  the  greatest  men  are  subject  to  the  in- 
firmities of  human  nature  equally  with  the  meanest; 
why  then  are  these  infirmities  recorded  ? ' 

This  sentence  may  be  taken  to  summarize  the  general 
conception  of  biography  before  Boswell.  The  death 
of  a  man  seems  to  have  been  regarded  as  an  opportunity 
for  rationalizing  his  views  and  perfecting  his  character. 
The  duty  of  a  biographer  was  to  forget  all  vices  and  to 
idealize  all  virtues,  with  the  laudable  purpose  of  setting 
before  the  public  a  notable  pattern  of  conduct.     'He 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY  271 

that  writes  the  Hfe  of  another,'  wrote  Johnson  in  the 
Idler,  '  endeavours  to  hide  the  man  that  he  may  produce 
a  hero.'  Even  Johnson  never  felt  quite  sure  how  far 
it  was  proper  to  describe  a  man's  vices  in  writing 
his  biography.  Boswell  notes  the  inconsistency  of 
his  views.  When  the  subject  of  the  poet  Parnell's 
drinking  arose,  Johnson  remarked,  'More  ill  may  be 
done  by  the  example,  than  good  by  telling  the  whole 
truth ' ;  but  at  another  time  he  said,  '  If  a  man  is  to 
write  A  Panegyric,  he  may  keep  vices  out  of  sight; 
but  if  he  professes  to  write  A  Life,  he  must  represent 
it  really  as  it  was.  ...  It  would  produce  an  instructive 
caution  to  avoid  drinking,  when  it  was  seen  that  even 
the  learning  and  genius  of  Parnell  could  be  debased  by 
it.'  ^  In  practice  it  is  clear  that  Johnson  preferred  to 
err  on  the  side  of  frankness.  Potter  was  shocked  be- 
cause he  revealed  the  avidity  of  Addison  by  repeating 
the  now-hackneyed  story  of  how  Steele  was  forced  to 
pay  a  debt  of  £100.  If  biography  is  regarded  as  the 
handmaid  of  morality,  and  eulogy  is  preferred  to 
actuality,  such  details  are  of  course  worse  than  useless. 
Beattie  dwells  on  'the  due  distinction  between  what 
deserves  to  be  known  and  what  ought  to  be  forgotten.'  ^ 
Miss  Burney  considered  that  the  publication  of  letters 
verbatim  was  the  'greatest  injury'  to  a  man's  memory. 
Horace  Walpole,  who  deplored  the  whole  policy  of 
expurgation,  nevertheless  gives  Mason,  the  biographer 

1  Life  3.  155. 

*  Forbes's  Life  of  Beattie  2.  175 ;   15  November  1785. 


272  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

of  Gray,  the  conventional  advice.  He  avows  that  the 
pubhcation  of  the  Hfe  of  Gray  is  an  opportunity  to 
estabUsh  that  poet's  character  'unimpeached.'  He  was 
shocked  at  the  section  of  the  biography  which  Mason 
had  submitted  to  his  criticism,  because  it  was  honest 
and  frank.  'What  can  provoke  you  to  be  so  impru- 
dent? .  .  .  You  know  my  idea  was  that  your  work 
should  consecrate  his  name.'  ^  Once  such  a  theory  of 
consecration  is  adopted,  the  author  of  a  life  is  driven 
relentlessly  towards  panegyric ;  for,  not  daring  to 
trust  the  public  to  interpret  facts,  he  must  suppress 
everything  that  is  not  admirable,  lest  the  mention  of 
even  the  slightest  fault  be  taken  to  point  to  the  exist- 
ence of  thousands  that  are  passed  over  in  silence. 
When  once  you  have  taken  to  varnishing,  you  must 
varnish  thoroughly,  for  any  cracks  or  bare  spots 
which  reveal  the  material  beneath  ruin  your  whole 
effect. 

To  a  public  with  these  lofty  notions  of  propriety 
Boswell,  genially  sacrificing  what  little  was  left  to 
him  of  his  reputation,  addressed,  in  1785,  his  Journal 
of  a  Tour  to  the  Hebrides  with  Samuel  Johnson  .  .  . 
'  containing  ...  A  series  of  his  Conversation,  Liter- 
ary Anecdotes  and  Opinions  of  Men  and  Books.'  It 
was  a  jumble  of  gossip  such  as  readers  had  hitherto 
seen  only  in  the  twopenny  pamphlets  of  the  scandal- 
mongers of  Grub  Street ;  but  was  set  forth  with  an 
abundance  of  detail  which  captured  the  most  frivolous 

1  Letters  8.  443 ;   17  April  1774. 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY  273 

and  an  air  of  authenticity  which  convinced  the  most 
sceptical.  It  depicted  a  great  man  who  had  been  in  his 
grave  but  a  few  months.  It  was  written  with  venera- 
tion, but  wholly  without  awe,  as  though  a  valet  had 
collaborated  with  the  Recording  Angel.  It  flouted  all 
restraints,  and  passed  the  most  distant  limits  of  decency. 
Nothing  like  it  had  ever  been  heard  of.  Even  in  our 
own  day,  to  a  world  whose  nerves  have  been  jaded  by  a 
thousand  exposes,  such  a  book  would  come  as  a  sur- 
prise, but  to  the  world  of  1786  it  was  a  revelation  of 
new  possibilities  in  literature,  as  alarming  as  they 
were  entertaining.  With  all  the  frankness  of  Pepys 
the  author  combines  the  conscious  skill  of  one  who  has 
mastered  the  art  of  anecdote  and  the  joy  of  a  conceited 
man  who  realizes  that  he  is  about  to  attain  fame  by 
one  of  the  by-paths  of  literature.  It  was  difficult,  in 
1785,  to  say  whether  Johnson's  theory  of  familiar 
biography  had  been  realized  or  travestied  in  this  book. 
It  was  obvious  that  he  had  been  hoist  with  his  own 
petard.  The  world  was  informed  with  the  most 
scrupulous  accuracy  of  how  he  said  his  prayers  and  how 
he  was  persuaded  to  wear  a  woollen  night-cap.  His 
idlest  word  was  recorded  as  though  in  a  dictograph. 
'  I  have  often  thought  that  if  I  kept  a  seraglio,  the  ladies 
should  all  wear  linen  gowns,  —  or  cotton ;  I  mean 
stuffs  made  of  vegetable  substances.  I  would  have  no 
silk ;  you  cannot  tell  when  it  is  clean,  .  .  . '  and  so 
forth.  At  times  the  book  is  hardly  quotable.  Once 
when  about  to  get  into  a  dirty  bed,  during  their  travels 


274  THE   SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

in  the  Hebrides,  Boswell  remarks  :  '  We  had  much  hesi- 
tation, whether  to  undress,  or  lye  down  with  our 
clothes  on.  I  said  at  last,  "I'll  plunge  in !  There  will 
be  less  harbour  for  vermin  about  me  when  I'm  stripped  " 
—  Dr.  Johnson  said,  he  was  like  one  hesitating  to  go 
into  the  cold  bath.  At  last  he  resolved  too.'  The 
first  sensation  of  the  reader  of  such  amazing  stuff  as 
this  is  that  Boswell  was  engaged  in  a  deliberate 
attempt  to  degrade  a  great  man.  He  was  accused  by 
a  writer  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  ^  of  having 
'exposed  and  cut  up'  his  hero  'in  the  most  shameful 
and  cruel  manner.'  That  Boswell  had  a  kind  of  mis- 
chievous delight  in  what  he  was  doing,  no  one  need 
take  the  trouble  to  tell  us ;  but  that  he  was  a  sort  of 
skilful  blackmailer  is  now  unthinkable.  He  felt  that 
he  was  doing  the  world  a  service  in  showing  that  a  great 
man  was  human ;  and  time  has  proved  that  he  was 
right.  'There  is  something  noble,'  Johnson  had  re- 
marked to  him,  'in  publishing  truth,  though  it  con- 
demns one's  self.'  Boswell  paid  this  price.  He  made 
Johnson  permanently  familiar  by  making  himself 
almost  permanently  notorious.  Witness  the  following 
extract : 

Dr.  Johnson  went  to  bed  soon.  When  one  bowl 
of  punch  was  finished,  I  rose,  and  was  near  the  door, 
in  my  way  up  stairs  to  bed ;  but  Corrichatachin  said, 
it  was  the  first  time  Col  had  been  in  his  house,  and  he 
should  have  his  bowl  —  and  would  not  I  join  in  drink- 
ing it  ?     The  heartiness  of  my  honest  landlord,  and  the 

1  May  1786. 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY  275 

desire  of  doing  social  honour  to  our  very  obliging  con- 
ductor, induced  me  to  sit  down  again.  Col's  bowl  was 
finished  ;  and  by  that  time  we  were  well  warmed.  A 
third  bowl  was  soon  made,  and  that  too  was  finished. 
We  were  cordial,  and  merry  to  a  high  degree ;  but  of 
what  passed  I  have  no  recollection,  with  any  accuracy. 
I  remember  calling  Corrichatachin  by  the  familiar 
appellation  of  Corri,  which  his  friends  do.  A  fourth 
bowl  was  made,  by  which  time  Col,  and  young  M'Kin- 
non,  Corrichatachin's  son,  slipped  away  to  bed.  I 
continued  a  little  with  Corri  and  Knockow ;  but  at  last 
I  left  them.  It  was  near  five  in  the  morning  when  I 
got  to  bed. 

Sunday,  September  26. 

I  awaked  at  noon,  with  a  severe  head-ach.  I  was 
much  vexed  that  I  should  have  been  guilty  of  such  a 
riot,  and  afraid  of  a  reproof  from  Dr.  Johnson.  I 
thought  it  very  inconsistent  with  that  conduct  which  I 
ought  to  maintain,  while  the  companion  of  the  Rambler. 
About  one  he  came  into  my  room,  and  accosted  me, 
'  What,  drunk  yet  ^ '  His  tone  of  voice  was  not  that  of 
severe  upbraiding;  so  I  was  relieved  a  little.  'Sir, 
(said  I,)  they  kept  me  up.'  He  answered,  'No,  you 
kept  them  up,  you  drunken  dog :'  —  This  he  said  with 
good-humoured  English  pleasantry.  Soon  afterwards, 
Corrichatachin,  Col,  and  other  friends  assembled  round 
my  bed.  Corri  had  a  brandy-bottle  and  glass  with 
him,  and  insisted  I  should  take  a  dram.  'Ay,  said  Dr. 
Johnson,  fill  him  drunk  again.  Do  it  in  the  morning, 
that  we  may  laugh  at  him  all  day.  It  is  a  poor  thing 
for  a  fellow  to  get  drunk  at  night,  and  sculk  to  bed,  and 
let  his  friends  have  no  sport.'  Finding  him  thus  jocu- 
lar, I  became  quite  easy ;  and  when  I  offered  to  get  up, 
he  very  good  naturedly  said,  'You  need  be  in  no  such 
hurry  now.'  I  took  my  host's  advice,  and  drank  some 
brandy,  which  I  found  an  effectual  cure  for  my  head- 
ach.  When  I  rose,  I  went  into  Dr.  Johnson's  room, 
and  taking  up  Mrs.  M'Kinnon's  Prayer-book,  I  opened 
it  at  the  twentieth  Sunday  after  Trinity,  in  the  epistle 


276  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

for  which  I  read,  'And  be  not  drunk  with  wine,  wherein 
there  is  excess.'  Some  would  have  taken  this  as  a 
divine  interposition. 

Such  writing  as  this  at  once  divided  the  reading  pub- 
lic into  hostile  camps.  There  were  many  who  con- 
sidered the  book  delightful ;  others  considered  it  a  new 
kind  of  libel.  It  became  the  subject  of  a  long  contro- 
versy in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine.  In  the  December 
following  its  appearance,  Boswell  was  accused  of  'be- 
traying private  conversations  even  of  the  most  trivial 
kind.'  In  May,  the  tastes  of  a  'gossiping  age'  were 
denounced  as  well.  By  December  1786,  the  sale  of 
the  book  having  gone  triumphantly  forward,  Boswell 
was  reminded  that  his  popularity  was  due  solely  to  the 
general  interest  in  Johnson ;  the  sale  of  his  work  was 
compared  to  the  consumption  of  potatoes  in  a  time  of 
famine ;  and  the  public  was  instructed  that  such  works 
require  for  their  composition  nothing  but  an  ear  and  a 
memory. 

In  the  spring  of  the  same  year,  soon  after  the  appear- 
ance of  Mrs.  Piozzi's  Anecdotes,  Walpole  wrote  to 
Mann: 

She  and  Boswell  and  their  hero  are  the  joke  of  the 
public.  A  Dr.  Wolcot,  soi-disant  Peter  Pindar,  has 
published  a  burlesque  eclogue,^  in  which  Boswell  and 
the  signora  are  the  interlocutors,  and  all  the  absurdest 
passages  in  the  works  of  both  are  ridiculed.  The  print- 
shops  teem  with  satiric  prints  on  them  :  one,  in  which 
Boswell,  as  a  monkey,  is  riding  on  Johnson,  the  bear,^ 

*  Bozzy  and  Piozzi,  or  the  British  Biographers,  A  Town  Eclogue,  1786. 
'  This  caricature  is  too  unseemly  to  admit  of  reproduction  here. 


BoswELL  Haunted  by  the  Ghost  of  Johnson 

From  a  contemporary  caricature 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY  277 

has  this  witty  inscription,  *My  friend  delineaviV  — 
But  enough  of  these  mountebanks  !  ^ 

Other   caricatures   represented  the  ghost  of  Johnson 

haunting  Boswell  while  he  pieced  together  his  Journal 

from  various  rags  of  reminiscence,   and  the  bust  of 

Johnson  frowning  down  upon  Boswell  and  Mrs.  Piozzi 

as  they  wrote.     Rowlandson  and  Collings  later  made 

the  Tour  the  subject  of  a  series  of  sixteen  caricatures. 

In   1786,   moreover,  a  pamphlet  appeared  entitled, 

A  Poetical  Epistle  from  the  Ghost  of  Dr.  Johnson  to  his 

Friends,  in  which  Boswell  was  satirized  together  with 

Strahan,  Courtenay,  and  Mrs.  Piozzi.     The  verses  were 

elaborately  annotated  with  quotations  from  the  Journal, 

and  Boswell  was  addressed  by  the  manes  of  Johnson  in 

these  words : 

How  oft  I  mark'd  thee,  like  a  watchful  eat, 
List'ning  to  catch  up  all  my  silly  chat ; 
How  oft  that  chat  I  still  more  silly  made, 
To  see  it  in  thy  commonplace  conveyed. 

This  was  the  invariable  charge  against  the  book.  It 
was  a  mass  of  small  talk  collected  by  a  man  with  a 
retentive  memory,  'not  to  do  honour  to  his  [Johnson's] 
memory,  by  judiciously  selecting  the  best  and  most 
striking  of  his  sentences,  but  with  a  design  to  show  his 
own  assiduity  in  exhibiting  the  Doctor  in  the  most 
glaring  colours  of  inconsistency.'  ^ 

There  was  a  secondary  charge  against  the  book.     It 

1  Letters  13.  379 ;   30  April  1786. 

*  Remarks  on  the  Journal  of  a  Tour  ...  in  a  Letter  to  James  Boswell, 
Esq.     By  'Verax.'  1785. 


278  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

was  conceived  as  a  libel  on  living  people.^  Various 
persons  —  the  Duchess  of  Hamilton,  Sir  Alexander 
MacDonald,  and  many  of  those  who  had  entertained 
the  travellers  in  the  Hebrides  —  discovered  in  the 
book  remarks  about  themselves  that  were  anything 
but  palatable.  A  reference  to  Mrs.  Thrale  created  the 
greatest  excitement.  Johnson's  remark  that  she  could 
not  get  through  Mrs.  Montagu's  Essay  on  Shakespeare 
was  there  for  all  the  world  to  read.  She  protested  in 
her  Anecdotes;  but  Boswell  reminded  her,  in  the  pages 
of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  that  she  had  read  his 
Journal  in  manuscript,  without  complaining  of  this, 
and  that  he  was  but  quoting  Johnson's  own  words 
regarding  her.  So  ended  one  controversy.  It  was 
not  the  only  one. 

But  perhaps  the  chief  excitement  rose  from  the 
advertisement  at  the  end  of  the  volume,  in  which  Bos- 
well announced  that  he  had  but  begun  his  memoirs  of 
Johnson.  He  proposed  presently  to  *  erect  a  literary 
monument  worthy  of  so  great  an  author,'  and  stated 
that  he  had  been  collecting  biographical  material  for 
more  than  twenty  years.  The  promise,  for  those  who 
had  known  Johnson,  was  not  gratifying.  If  Boswell 
had  upset  the  literary  world  with  an  account  of  three 
months  in  Johnson's  life,  what  would  he  do  in  recount- 
ing seventy -five  years  of  it?  Everybody  who  had 
known  Johnson  held  his  breath  for  fear.  Many  urged 
the  new  biographer  to  be  cautious.     Fanny  Burney 

1  Cf.  Walpole's  remarks  about  the  Life,   Letters  14.  438;    26   May  1791. 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY  279 

refused  to  assist  him  in  his  work  of  showing  the  pleas- 
anter  side  of  Johnson's  character,  and  wrote  in  her 
Diary/  'I  feel  sorry  to  be  named  or  remembered  by 
that  biographical,  anecdotical  memorandummer  till 
his  book  of  poor  Dr.  Johnson's  life  is  finished  and  pub- 
lished.' Sir  William  Forbes,  who  was  distressed 
because  Boswell  had  quoted  his  approval  of  the  Journal, 
took  the  liberty  of  '  strongly  enjoining  him '  to  be  more 
careful  about  personalities  in  the  later  work.^  He  had 
perhaps  never  heard  Boswell's  famous  reply  to  Hannah 
More,  who  had  urged  him  to  'mitigate  some  of  John- 
son's asperities'  when  he  published  the  Journal.  'He 
said  roughly,'  she  writes,  '"He  would  not  cut  off  his 
claws,  nor  make  a  tiger  a  cat  to  please  anybody."'^ 
This  remark  has  been  hackneyed  in  every  work  on 
Boswell,  but  it  can  never  be  quoted  too  often,  for  it  is 
Boswell's  reply  to  the  world.  There  is  nothing  more 
to  be  said. 

I  have  dwelt  on  the  reception  of  Boswell's  Journal 
of  a  Tour  to  the  Hebrides  because  it  is  the  most  effective 
way  of  showing  the  novelty  and  the  magnitude  of  his 
achievement.  If  the  author  had  been  any  other  than 
James  Boswell,  critics  would  long  ere  this  have  ex- 
patiated on  the  splendid  courage  of  his  undertaking ; 
but  he  enjoyed  and  esteemed  his  own  work  too  highly 
to  elicit  such  praise.     Whatever  were  Boswell's  super- 

1  Diary  3.  219 ;   26  February  1787. 

*  Life  of  Beattie  2.  182 ;  9  January  1786. 

'  Roberts's  Memoirs  of  More  I.  403 ;   1785. 


280  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

ficial  faults,  whatever  the  resentments  that  he  caused, 
it  is  impossible  to  withhold  our  admiration  from  the 
simple  confidence  in  the  letter  of  the  truth  that  charac- 
terized his  Scotch  soul.  His  would  be  the  simplicity 
of  childhood  if  it  were  not  the  simplicity  of  genius. 
The  Lord  Bishop  of  Chester  complained  ^  that  Boswell 
recorded  facts  simply  because  they  were  facts.  Such 
was  indeed  the  case. 

When,  in  1791,  the  Life  appeared,  many  of  the  old 
charges  were  repeated  and  some  of  the  old  satires 
revived ;  but  it  is  not  important  to  consider  them  in 
detail,  for  the  note  of  admiration,  which  had  been 
heard  now  and  again  in  the  beginning,  when  the  Journal 
was  published,  soon  became  dominant.  The  other 
lives  and  memoirs  of  Johnson,  with  which  Bos  well's 
former  work  had  often  been  compared,  now  served 
only  for  purposes  of  contrast ;  they  were  useful  in 
illustrating  the  greatness  of  the  new  work. 

What  are  the  characteristics  which  tended  to  give 
the  Life  its  place  in  the  history  of  biography  .^^  They 
are  of  the  simplest  kind.  Boswell  had,  as  this  entire 
chapter  has  been  designed  to  show,  a  passion  for  com- 
pleteness. It  is  hardly  necessary  to  labour  this  point. 
Boswell  himself  writes  near  the  opening  of  his  book : 
*I  will  venture  to  say  that  he  will  be  seen  in  this  work 
more  completely  than  any  man  who  has  yet  lived.' 
In  this  sentence  Boswell  wrote  his  own  panegyric,  as  in 
his  reply  to  Miss  More  he  had  pronounced  his  own 

1  Forbes's  Life  of  Beattie  i.  178. 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRAPHY  281 

defence.  Like  everything  that  he  did,  the  panegyric 
is  not  without  the  ludicrous  touch,  for  he  adds:  'Had 
his  other  friends  been  as  diligent  and  ardent  as  I  was, 
he  might  have  been  almost  entirely  preserved.'  He 
might,  indeed ;  for  why  should  anything  be  lost,  while 
there  is  a  note-book  —  and  a  Boswell  ?  Boswell,  I 
repeat,  aspired  to  the  completeness  of  life  itself. 

Nor  is  it  greatly  necessary  to  dwell  on  Boswell's 
fidelity  to  fact.  It  has  been  often  dwelt  upon,  and, 
through  the  labours  of  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill,  is  now  gener- 
ally admitted  ;  though  by  one  who  liked  neither  Boswell 
nor  Hill  the  matter  has  recently  been  once  more  called 
in  question.^  It  would  seem  that  a  work  which  in  its 
own  day  was  both  praised  and  denounced  for  its 
scrupulous  accuracy  might  have  been  accepted  without 
question.  It  is  scarcely  reasonable  to  demand  a  more 
lifelike  biographer  than  Boswell.  His  own  times 
readily  granted  that  he  had  given  the  true  Johnson ; 
that  was  both  the  praise  and  the  blame.  Pepys,  who 
knew  Johnson  and  had  no  illusions  about  him,  wrote 
to  Hannah  More : 

The  Journal  is  a  most  faithful  picture  of  him,  so 
faithful  that  I  think  anybody  who  has  got  a  clear  idea 
of  his  person  and  manner  may  know  as  much  of  him 
from  that  book  as  by  having  been  acquainted  with 
him  (in  the  usual  way)  for  three  years.^ 

'  It  has  been  reserved  for  Mr.  Percy  Fitzgerald  to  revive  the  old  charges 
against  Boswell  and  to  discover  new  ones,  which  he  has  set  forth  with  a 
virulence  that  would  be  inexcusable  in  any  one  who  had  not  a  preposterous  i 
theory  to  defend. 

2  A  Later  Pepys  2.  260;   24  October  1785. 


282  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

This  was  written  before  the  Life  appeared.  Respecting 
the  later  work  we  have  the  testimony  of  Burke  to 
its  value  as  a  monument  to  Johnson's  conversation.^ 
Even  more  than  this  may  be  said.  We  have  the 
nearest  possible  thing  to  Johnson's  own  approval. 
He  had  himself  read  the  Journal  in  manuscript,  and 
pronounced  it  a  'very  exact  picture  of  a  portion  of  his 
life.'  It  is  diflBcult  to  demand  more  than  this.  In  the 
same  work  Boswell  writes  : 

He  read  this  day  a  good  deal  of  my  Journal,  written 
in  a  small  book  with  which  he  had  supplied  me,  and 
was  pleased,  for  he  said,  'I  wish  thy  books  were  twice 
as  big.'  He  helped  me  fill  up  blanks  which  I  had  left  in 
first  writing  it,  when  I  was  not  quite  sure  of  what  he 
h^  said,  and  he  corrected  any  mistakes  that  I  had 
made.^ 

In  his  accurate  reproduction  of  life,  Boswell  surpasses 
all  the  realists  and  attains  to  something  of  the  inex- 
haustibility of  nature  itself.  Delightful  as  is  his  book 
for  mere  reading,  it  can  never  be  fully  appreciated  till 
it  has  been  used  as  a  work  of  reference ;  for  such  it  was 
intended  to  be.  The  work  exhibits,  according  to  the 
title-page,  'a  view  of  literature  and  literary  men  in 
Great  Britain  for  near  half  a  century.'  Boswell 
aspired  to  be  not  only  stenographer  but  historian. 
And  to  the  life  that  he  loved  he  was  both. 

We  reach  at  last  the  core  of  Boswell's  being,  his 
pagan  joy  in  life,   that   greediness   of   social  pleasure 

1  Journal,  p.  307. 

2  76.  p.  383. 


THE  ART  OF  INTIMATE  BIOGRArHY  283 

which  explains  all  his  faults  and  suggests  all  his  great- 
ness. He  loved  social  life  as  other  men  have  loved  a 
noble  woman  or  a  noble  cause.  He  solemnly  dedicated 
his  life  to  it  and  his  genius  to  the  recording  of  it.  Only 
when  his  work  is  viewed  in  the  large  does  one  see  its 
grandeur.  Like  Ulysses,  he  might  have  said,  when  his 
great  work  was  done,  '  Much  have  I  seen  and  known, 
cities  of  men  and  manners  .  .  .  myself  not  least  but 
honoured  of  them  all.' 

I  incline  to  think  that  this  social  avidity  is  the 
ruling  passion  not  only  of  Boswell  but  of  all  the  life 
that  we  have  been  studying,  of  the  salons,  the  conversa- 
tionists, the  diarists,  and  the  letter-writers.  That  life 
at  its  best  blends  two  kinds  of  pleasure  that  seem  ordi- 
narily incompatible,  those  of  society  and  solitude,  of 
association  and  reflection.  In  the  'exchange  of  mind' 
which  is  its  ideal,  its  disciples  find  a  joy  that  excels  the 
more  passive  pleasures  of  reading,  by  bringing  them 
directly  into  the  creation  of  its  characteristic  product, 
conversation,  and  to  this  it  adds  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
the  immediate  effect  of  one's  words.  Conversation 
such  as  this  may  be  said  to  represent  the  active,  social, 
and  more  human  side  of  the  intellectual  life,  while 
meditation  stands  for  its  contemplative  and  eremitical 
side.  The  two  are  often  mutually  exclusive.  Philos- 
opher and  poet  belong  to  the  latter  class,  because  the 
meditative  temper  naturally  shuns  social  distractions ; 
but  diarists,  letter-writers,  and  biographers  owe  their 
very   existence   to   this   social   instinct,   and   write   to 


284  THE  SALON  AND  ENGLISH  LETTERS 

exalt  it.  They  cannot  bear  that  the  delights  which 
they  have  experienced  should  pass  away  without  leaving 
a  memorial.  They  are  determined  not  only  to  pluck 
the  passing  hour,  but  to  do  what  they  can  to  preserve 
the  blossom  even  as  it  droops  in  their  hand.  A  withered 
flower  is  better  than  none  at  all ;  at  worst,  it  is  a 
pathetic  reminder  of  what  has  been.  The  memorialist 
is  one  whose  face  is  ever  towards  the  past  and  the 
glories  that  have  been,  the  nodes  ccenceque  deum.  It 
is  in  honour  of  them  that  his  work  is  done.  His  office 
is  to  record  life,  not  to  transfigure  it.  He  cannot 
aspire  to  be  among  those  who  have  seen  visions  and 
pointed  others  towards  them ;  the  joy  of  poetic  creation 
and  the  passion  of  adventurous  thought  are  not  for 
him ;  but  it  is  his  to  know  men  and  the  cheerful  ways 
of  men,  and  to  unite  us  with  the  heroic  minds  of  old, 
not  in  the  lonely  glory  of  their  visions,  but  in  their 
more  familiar  hours  and  their  more  human  joys. 


INDEX 


Addison,  Joseph,  conversation  of, 
220 ;    Spectator,  quoted,  103  Ji. 

Alembert,  Jean  d',  birth,  43  ;  quoted, 
11,  32,  49;  referred  to,  11,  27,  52, 
55. 

Anglomania,  in  Paris,  12  fT. 

Anglomanie,  Saurin's  comedy,  12-13. 

Anstey,  Christopher,  121. 

Arblay,  Mme.  d',  see  Burney,  Fanny. 

Aurelia,  Hoole's  poem,  178. 

Barbauld,  Letitia,  124. 

Barmecides,  Les,  La  Harpe's  tragedy, 
67. 

Barry,  James,  portrait  of  Johnson, 
199  ;  of  Mrs.  Montagu,  199  ;  rela- 
tions with  Mrs.  Montagu,  199. 

Bas  Bleu,  Hannah  More's  poem,  23, 
123-24,  125. 

Bath,  Earl  of,  123,  125. 

Beattie,  James,  character,  189 ;  Essay 
on  Truth,  190  ;  Essays,  192  ;  Min- 
strel, The,  190  ff. ;    dedicated 

to  Mrs.  Montagu,  193 ;  presented 
to  George  III,  192 ;  relations  with 
Mrs.  Montagu,  189-95. 

Beauclerk,  Topham,  53,  104. 

Beaufort,  Duchess  of,  153  n.,  205. 

Bedford,  Countess  of,  85. 

Behn,  Aphra,  94-96,  257. 

biography,  art  of,  268  ff. ;  theory  of, 
before  Boswell,  270  ff. 

Blount,  Martha,  100. 

'blue,'  i.e.,  bluestocking,  origin  and 
use  of  the  word,  132-33. 

bluestocking,  etymology,  127-28 ; 
translated  into  French,  127,  130, 
133. 

Bluestocking  Club,  123  ff. ;  members 
of,  listed,  123-24 ;   origin  of,  129  ff. 

bluestockings,  as  authors,  166  ff. ; 
as  hostesses,  134  ff. ;  as  patrons  of 
the  arts,  189  ff. ;  descent  from  the 
Marquise  de  Rambouillet,  22. 


Bocage,  Mme.  du,  35,  52,  75 ;  poem 
to  Mrs.  Montagu,  135  n. ;  visits 
Mrs.  Montagu,  105,  135. 

Bolingbroke,  Lord,  relations  with 
Mme.  de  Tencin,  45. 

Boscawen,  Admiral,  125,  129. 

Boscawen,  Mrs.  Frances,  153-58; 
assemblies,  153  ;  Boswell's  opinion 
of,  153  ;  interest  in  Mrs.  Yearsley, 
205  ;  letters,  154  ;  patron  of  letters, 
154 ;    relations  with  Hannah  More, 

154-56,    181,     184    ff. ;    with 

Pye,    156   n. ;     with  Young, 

156  n. ;  reports  the  discovery  of 
new  letters  by  Mme.  de  Sevigne, 
237. 

Boswell,  James,  announces  the  Life 
of   Johnson,    278-79 ;     biography, 

knowledge  of,  269  ;   ,  theory  of, 

derived  from  Johnson,  269  ff. ; 
caricatures  of,  277 ;  character,  8, 
110;  influence  on  Johnson,  222- 
23 ;  Life  of  Johnson,  complete- 
ness of,  281 ;    ,   reception  of, 

280  ;  truthfulness  of,  281  ;  love  of 
social  life,  282  ;  quoted,  5  ;  refer- 
ences to  bluestockings,  126 ;  re- 
fuses to  idealize  Johnson,  279  ;  Tour 
to  the  Hebrides,  Johnson  reads,  282  ; 

,  reception  of,  272  ff. ;    , 

reviewed  in  the  Gentleman' s  Maga- 
zine,   274 ;     ,    selection    from, 

274-76 ;  treatment  of  his  con- 
temporaries, 278. 

BoufHers,    Mme.    de,    53 ;     relations 

with  Gibbon,  77  ;  with  Hume, 

27 ;    with  Johnson,  53,  104. 

bouts  rimis,  117,  119,  120. 

breakfasts,  literary,  105  ff. 

Buffon,  Georges  de,  52. 

Burke,  Edmund,  123,  139  n. ;  in- 
debtedness to  Johnson's  conver- 
sation, 234 ;  quoted,  5 ;  visits 
Parisian  salons,  66-68. 


285 


286 


INDEX 


Burney,  Dr.  Charles,  159,  189. 

Burney,  Fanny,  character,  255,  257 ; 
Diary,  art  of,  254  ff. ;  ,  dra- 
matic quality  in,  265  ;  ,  selec- 
tion from,  262-64  ;  ,  truthful- 
ness of,  265  ;  Evelina,  reception  of, 
257  ;  friends,  258  ;  love  of  boisterous 
scenes,  262 ;  luck,  256 ;  relations 
with  Mrs.  Ord,  159-60;  relations 
with  Mrs.  Thrale,  163;  self-con- 
sciousness, 267  ;  sensibility,  266  ; 
sojourn  at  Court,  as  Dresser  to  the 
Queen,  257,  259  ff. 

Cardigan  Priory,  salon  at,  91. 

card-playing,  in  salons,  106. 

Carlisle,  Countess  of,  88. 

Carter,  Elizabeth,  172-77;  catho- 
licity of  taste,  176-77 ;  Johnson's 
opinion  of,  174  ;  learning,  157,  173  ; 
Poems,   174 ;    relations  with  Gray, 

144;     with    Mrs.    Montagu, 

173 ;    romanticism,    175 ;     transla- 
tion of  Epictetus,   173-74. 

Cartwright,  William,  89. 

Castiglione,  Baldassare,  his  Corte- 
giano  cited,  18  ff. 

Centlivre,  Susannah,  100. 

Chapman,  George,  85-86. 

Chapone,  Mrs.  Hester,  177-80; 
Essays,  138,  157 ;  familiar  letters, 
180 ;  Letters,  177  if.,  202  ;  poems, 
179;  quoted,  132;  referred  to, 
124,     179 ;     relations    with     Mrs. 

Carter,     178;      with     Mrs. 

Montagu,  178; with  Richard- 
son, 177,  180. 

Charles  II,  relations  of,  with  the 
Duchess  of  Mazarin,  97. 

Charlotte,  Queen,  259,  261. 
I  Chesterfield,    Lord,    opinion    of    the 
I      salon,  46  ;   relations  with  Mme.  de 
Tencin,  45  ff. 

Cholmondeley,  Mrs.  Mary,  135,  153. 

Church,  of  England,  9 ;  of  Rome, 
hatred  of,  in  salons,  37. 

circle,  seating  of  guests  in.  111,  126, 
139,  159. 

Clarence,  Duke  of,  262  ff. 

Clubs,  literary,  5-7. 

Colman,  George,  102  n. 

conversation,  chief  amusement  in 
salons,  25,  135  ;    Goldsmith's,   220, 

'■    221 ;  ideal  of,  7,  20,  25,  223  ;  John- 


son's,    217     ff. ;      Boswell's 

influence  on,  222,  227. 

conversazione,    nature    and    office    of,  y 
102  ff.,  108  ff.,  152.  ^ 

'Cophthi,'  Walpole's  name  for  blue- 
stockings, 147. 

Cornaro,  Caterina,  17. 

cosmopolitanism,  of  salons,  43,  144, 
147  n. 

court  of  love,  17. 

courts.   Renaissance,  as  predecessors     ,. 
of  the  salon,  16  ff.,  84.  ' 

Cowley,  Abraham,  verses  to  Mrs. 
Phillips,  92. 

Cowper,     William,     correspondence, 

charm  of,  249-50  ;    compared 

with  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  239-40; 
relations  with  Mrs.  Montagu,  197- 
99 ;  translation  of  Homer,  sub- 
mitted to  Mrs.  Montagu,  198. 

Crewe,  Lady,  131,  135. 

Daniel,  Samuel,  84,  85,  86. 

Davies,  Sir  John,  85. 

Decameron,  Boccaccio's,  18  n. 

declamation,  fashionable  entertain- 
ment in  salons,  106. 

Deffand,  Mme.  du,  blindness,  61 ; 
career  and  salon,  59-64  ;  described 
by  Walpole,  59-60  ;  ennui,  60,  63  ; 
letter  to  Walpole  in  manner  of 
Mme.   de  Sevigne,    238 ;    opinion 

of    Burke,    67;     of    Gibbon, 

77 ;  of   Hume,   61 ;    of 

Walpole,  57  ;  quoted,  7,  13,  62  n., 
64,  75,  238;    relations  with  Mile. 

de     Lespinasse,     61 ;      with 

Montesquieu,    60    n. ;  with 

Walpole,  27,  63-65;  type  of  her 
century,  34  ;   wit,  29. 

Delany,  Mrs.  Mary,  160-63  ;  friend- 
ship with  Swift,  161  ;  interest  in 
Mrs.  Yearsley,  205  ;  relations  with 
Miss  Burney,  162 ;  verses,  Miss 
More's  to,  161. 

democracy,  in  salons,  25 ;  theory  of, 
9. 

Denham,  Sir  John,  92. 

diary,  as  a  literary  type,  254  ff. 

Diderot,  Denis,  52. 

Donne,  John,  relations  with  the 
Countess  of  Bedford,  86-87. 

Drayton,  Michael,  85. 

Dryden,  John,  92,  96. 


INDEX 


287 


England,  French  attitude  to,  11  ff. 
Englishman  in  Paris,  Foote's  comedy, 

42  n. 
epigram,    Garrick's    on    Goldsmith, 

116;    Johnson's  on  Barnard,   IIG; 

popularity  of,   in  salons,   26,    115- 

117,  229  ;   Young's  on  Chesterfield, 

116. 
Este,  Beatrice  d',  17. 

feminism,    in    seventeenth    century, 

98-99. 
fcmmes  savantes,  28,  35,  78,  83,98  n., 

105. 
Ferguson,  Adam,  191. 
Fielding,  Sarah,  257. 
Fontenelle,  Bernard  de,  45. 
Foote,  Samuel,  quoted,  42  n. 
Frederick,  Duke  of  Urbino,  18  ff. 
friendship,  in  salons,  26  ff.,  210. 

Garrick,  David,  123,  139  n. ;  decla- 
mation, 106;   verses,  121. 

Gay,  John,  100. 

Gcoffrin,  Mme.,  career  and  salon, 
47-50  ;  charity,  73  ;  described  by 
Walpole,  58 ;  maxims,  1 13 ; 
praised  by  Mile,  de  Lespinasse, 
73  ff. ;    referred   to,   25 ;    relations 

with    Marmontel,    27 ;     with 

Walpole,  58  ff. ;  type  of  her  cen- 
tury, 34,  36  ;    wit,  29,  48  n. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  career  in  salons, 
74-80,  211;  Decline  and  Fall, 
popularity  of,  in  salons,  76 ;  influ- 
ence of  salon  upon,  79 ;  Mme.  du 
Deffand's  opinion  of,  74-75,  77 ; 
Mme.  Necker's  opinion  of,  75 ; 
quoted,  11;  relations  with  Mme. 
Necker,  77-79  ;  Walpole's  opinion 
of,  76  n. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  account  of  Pari- 
sian salon,  42 ;  not  a  frequenter  of 
the  London  salon,  211 ;  quoted,  32, 
103  n.,  105,  113;  visits  Mrs. 
Vesey,  147  n. 

Gonzaga,  Elizabeth,  of  Urbino,  17  ff. ; 
27,  84. 

gossip,  223,  245,  248-49;  see  also 
scandal. 

government,  theories  of ,  11. 

Gray,  Thomas,  144 ;  at  Mrs.  Vesey's, 
147. 


Greville,  Lady,  153. 
Guibert,  Comte  de,  67. 

Henrietta  Maria,  Queen,  88. 

Herrios,  Lady,  153. 

Hervey,  Lady,  135. 

Hesketh,  Lady,  197-98. 

Hogarth,  William,  depiction  of  the 
levee,  103. 

Holbach,  Baron  d',  his  salon,  70,  75. 

Holcroft,  Thomas,  quoted,  112,  170  n. 

Hoole,  Rev.  Samuel,  quoted,  108  ff., 
178. 

Hume,  Alexander,  career  in  Parisian 
salons,  50-55 ;  death,  55 ;  influ- 
ence of  the  salon  on,  55 ;  quarrel 
with  Rousseau,  53  ff. ;   quoted,   5. 

Huntington,  Countess  of,  87. 

intrigue,  flourishes  in  salons,  89,  95. 
Isabella,  of  Mantua,  17. 
Italy,  courts  of,  see  courts. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  conversation, 
231  ff. ;  correspondence,  252 ; 
described  by  Hoole,  109-10 ;  dog- 
matism, 230  ;  levee,  104  ;  manner 
in  conversation,  224  ;  quarrel  with 
Mrs.  Montagu,  199-202;  quoted, 
5,  6,  7,  9,  100,  101,  231  ff. ;  salons, , 
visits,      210-11;       serenity,      223; 

A  style  in  conversation  and  in  writ- 
I  ing    compared,    229 ;     versatility, 
226. 

Jonson,  Ben,  85. 

Kauffmann,  Angelica,  134. 
Kyd,  Thomas,  84. 

Lambert,  Mme.  de,  44. 

landscape,  love  of,  among  blue- 
stockings, 148,  176. 

laughter,  unpopular  in  salons,  57. 

Lely,  Sir  Peter,  97  n. 

Lennox,  Charlotte,  257. 

Lespinasse,  Julie  de,  career  and  salon, 
71  ff. ;    relations  with  Burke,  68 ; 

with    d'Alembert,    25 ;  

with  Sterne,  71-72 ;  Sentimental 
Journey,  imitates,  72  ff. ;  type  of 
romanticism,  34. 

letter-writing,  236  ff. 

levee,  102-05. 


288 


INDEX 


London,  a  literary  centre,  5,  6. 

Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  18. 

Lucan,  Lady,  135,  153. 

Lyttelton,  Lord,  Dialogues  of  the 
Dead,  167 ;  Johnson's  life  of, 
196  ff. ;  poetry,  157 ;  praises 
Beattie,  190 ;  relations  with  Mrs. 
Montagu,  139-140,  157. 

Macaulay,  Mrs.  Catharine,  10,  135. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  225,  259,  267,  268. 

Manley,  Mrs.  Mary,  98,  100. 

Mann,  Sir  Horace,  Walpole's  letters 
to,  242  n. 

manners,  literature  of,  3. 

Marmontcl,  Jean,  52. 

Mascarille,  102. 

Mathias,  T.  J.,  170. 

maxims,  sec  sentiments. 

Mazarin,  Cardinal,  96. 

Mazarin,  Duchess  of,  96-98. 

men  of  letters,  state  of,  in  eighteenth 
century,  32. 

Miller,  Lady,  career  and  salon,  117- 
122  ;   poems,  120. 

Moli^re,  J.  B.  P.,  comedies  referred 
to,  26  71.,  28,  29,  102,  107. 

Monckton,  Miss,  153. 

Montagu,  Lady  Mary  Wortley, 
100-01,  237,  252. 

Montagu,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  achieve- 
ments, 141 ;  assemblies,  138 ; 
breakfasts,  105;  conceit,  202-03; 
Dialogues  of  the  Dead,  167-69  ;  200  ; 
Essays  on  Shakespeare,  169-72, 
278;  'female  Maecenas,'  189; 
'femme  savante,'  a,  140,  171-72; 
influence  in  literary  world,  202 ; 
learning,  140,  198;  loyalty,  195; 
patron  of  the  arts,  189-208 ;  quar- 
rel with  Johnson,  196,  199-202; 
'Queen  of  the  Blues,'  133;  rela- 
tions with  Barry,   199  ;    with 

Beattie,   189-95;    with  Cow- 

per,  197-99 ;    with  Lyttelton, 

167,    200;     with    Mme.    du 

Deffand,  136-37 ;    with  Mrs. 

Yearsley,     204     ff. ;       with 

Potter,    195;     with    Sterne, 

202 ;  salon,  originates  in  Lon- 
don, 124. 

More,  Hannah,  180-88;  Bas  Bleu, 
23,  123-25 ;  Bleeding  Rock,  181 ; 
description  of  an  assembly,  106  n. ; 


Essays,  156,  187 ;  Fatal  Falsehood, 
185-86;  Florio,  157,  187;  Inflexi- 
ble Captive,  181 ;  influence  of 
bluestockings  on,  180,  188 ;  Ode 
on  the  Marquess  of  Worcester,  155 
Ode  to  Mrs.  Boscawen,  154  ff. 
Percy,  154,  183-85 ;  piety,  186-88 

relations  with  Garrick,  181 ;    

with  Mrs.  Boscawen,  181  ff. ; 

with  Mrs.  Yearsley,  204  ff. ; 

with  Walpole,  187 ;  romanticism, 
182  ;  Sensibility,  156  ;  Sir  Eldred, 
181-83;  'Stella,'  206;  Thoughts 
on  the  Manners  of  the  Great,  188. 

Necker,    Mme.,    career    and    salon, 

77-80;    quoted,  7,   14,  38,  63  n. ; 

relations    with     Gibbon,    77    ff. ; 

with  Hume,  27 ;    with 

Mrs.  Montagu,  136. 
Newcastle,  Duchess  of,  90  n. 

Opie,  John,  portrait  of  Miss  More, 

157. 
Ord,  Mrs.  Anne,  relations  with  Miss 

Burney,  159-60;    salon,  124,  158- 

159. 
'Orinda,'  see   Phillips,  Mrs.    Kathe- 

rine. 
Ossian,  176. 
Otway,  Thomas,  96. 

Paoli,  General,  147  n. 

Paris,  attraction  for  Englishmen,  15, 
36,  38. 

patronage,  30,  84,  189  ff.-.-. 

Pembroke,  Countess  of,  84. 

Pepys,  Sir  William,  123. 

Percy,  Bishop,  Reliques,  182. 

Phillips,  Mrs.  Katherine,  91-94. 

Piozzi,  Mme.,  see  Thrale,  Mrs.  Hester. 

PLx,  Mary,  98. 

Platonic  love,  88,  91,  93. 

Polignac,  Mme.  de,  131. 

Portland,  Duchess  of,  131,  162,  205, 
207. 

Potter,  Robert,  attacks  Johnson's 
Lives,  196,  270 ;  meets  Johnson, 
196;  relations  with  Mrs.  Mon- 
tagu, 195-97. 

pricieuses  galantes,  88. 

precieuses  ridicules,  29. 

Prior,  Matthew,  relations  with  Mme. 
de  Tencin,  44  ff. 


INDEX 


289 


pseudonyma,    classical,    89,   91,    95, 

206. 
Pye,  Henry,  poem  to  Mrs.  Boscawen, 

156  n. 

Queensbury,  Duchess  of,  100. 

Rambouillet,  Hotel  de,  22  ff. ;  Mar- 
quise de,  22  ff.,  102  n. 

Raynal,  Abb6,  144,  150-51. 

Restoration,  influence  of,  on  the 
salon,  89-90. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  indebtedness 
to  Johnson's  conversation,  235. 

Richardson,  Samuel,  his  Daughters, 
100  ;   fame  in  France,  14. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  9,  40,  54,  59,  176. 

Rowe,  Nicholas,  relations  with  Mrs. 
Phillips,  92  n. 

ruelle,  102  n. 

Rutland,  Lady,  87. 

Saint  Evremond,  Charles  de,  96-98. 

salon,  characteristics,  24  ff. ;  con- 
servatism, 210  ff. ;  conversation 
in,  25,  125 ;  cosmopolitanism  of, 
43 ;  decline  of,  209 ;  democratic 
tone,  25 ;  failure  of,  in  England, 
213;  first  English,  83;  ideal  of, 
152 ;  influence  on  authors,  39 ; 
literary  academy,  a,  31 ;  origin  of, 
16  ff. ;  original  works  read  aloud, 
26,  67,  72  n. ;  patronage,  30,  84, 
189  ff. ;  radicalism  of,  37  ;  room, 
24 ;    woman's  place  in,  16,  33  ff. 

scandal,  prevalence  of ,  in  salons.  111. 

scepticism,  in  salons,  10,  37,  42,  52, 
150. 

Schwellenberg,  Mrs.,  260,  264. 

Scudery,  Mile,  de,  26,  95. 

sentiments,  popular  in  salons,  113- 
15. 

Sevigne,  Mme.  de,  influence  of,  in 
England,  237  ff. 

Seward,  Anna,  121. 

Shakespeare,  William,  Mrs.  Mon- 
tagu's Essay  on,  169-72 ;  salon 
spirit  in  his  comedies,  22,  85. 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  Rivals, 
115;  School  for  Scandal,  quoted, 
103,   104,   107,   112,   115. 

Sheridan,  Thomas,  106. 

Spenser,  Edmund,  84. 

Sterne,    Laurence,    describes    salons. 


37;    influence  of  salons  upon,  74;, 
relations  with  Mrs.  Montagu,  202 ;  [ 

with    Mrs.    Vesey,    148    ff. ; 

Sentimental  Journey,  quoted,  37, 
69 ;  imitated  by  Mile,  de  Lespi- 
nasse,  72  ff. 

Stillingflect,  Benjamin,  123,  128-30. 

Stuart,  Lady  Louisa,  126,  139. 

Suckling,  Sir  John,  89. 

Swift,  Jonathan,  100,  n4,|  |l<»:i,-V)^ 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  relations  with  Mrs. 
Phillips,  92-94. 

Tencin,  Mme.  de,  career  and  salon, 
43-47,  102 ;  type  of  her  century, 
34. 

Tessier,  Le,  106. 

Thrale,  Hester,  Anecdotes  of  John- 
son, 164  ;  ,  reception  of,  276 ; 

character,  165 ;  not  properly  a 
bluestocking,   124 ;    relations  with 

Johnson,  163-64;    with  Miss 

Burney,  163-64. 

Tighe,  Edward,  106. 

Trotter,  Catherine,  98. 

Twickenham  Park,  salon  at,  85. 

Vaughan,  Henry,  94. 

Vesey,  Agmondesham,  115,  203. 

Vesey,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  agnosticism, 
150 ;  bluestocking,  use  oiF  the  word, 
130  ;  entertains  the  Literary  Club, 
33  n.,  147 ;  relations  with  Sterne, 
148  ff. ;  romanticism,  147,  151 ; 
salon,  141-52  ;  ,  one  of  the  origi- 
nators, in  London,  124. 

Vivonne,  Catherine  de,  see  Ram- 
bouillet, Marquise  de. 

Voiture,  Vincent,  25. 

Voltaire,  Frangois,  denounced  by 
bluestockings,  109,  151 ;  opinion 
of,  in  salons,  37  ;  opinion,  his,  of 
the  English,  12. 

Walpole,  Horace,  correspondence, 
art  of,  236  ff. ;  gossip,  love  of, 
249-50 ;  influence  of  salons  on, 
39,  65-66 ;  interest  in  Mrs.  Years- 
ley,  206  ;  letter  to  Rousseau,  54,  59  ; 

opinion    of    Gibbon,  76    w. ;    

of   Hume,    51 ;   of   the   salon, 

56  ff . ;  popularity  in  Paris,  59 ; 
quoted,  10,  36,  39,  42,  44  n.,  52, 


290 


INDEX 


58,  62  n.,  66  n.,  68,  76  n.,  132, 
236  ff. ;    relations  with  Mme.  du 

Deffand,  63-65 ;    with  Mme. 

Geoffrin,  57 ;  salons,  career  in, 
56-66  ;  uses  the  word  bluestocking, 
132. 

Walsingham,  Mrs.,  124,  153,  157. 


Woodhouse,  the  poetical  shoemaker, 

205. 
Wroth,  Lady,  87. 

Yearsley,  Mrs.  Ann,  the  poetical 
milk-woman,  career  and  poems, 
204-08. 

Young,  Edward,  100,  156  n.,  157. 


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